The real reason why fantasy mail coifs are stupid is because obviously if you don't wear any head protection then it means you're a main character so you're more likely to survive.
I saw a video on worldstar of a chap getting an axe to the top of the head, he was sitting looking down and an insane fella just swung it atop him. Gruesome, and sickening. As to why I watched, like to remind myself that the world is a dangerous place, and best to be aware around strangers.
@@SergeantPsycho Kevlar protection ratings take blunt force trauma into account. Luckily, the pistol rounds which Kevlar can stop in the first place aren’t very energetic. It’s the same story with rifle/ballistic plates and rifle rounds. Those spread the energy of the bullet over a larger area. I’ve done a fair bit of reading about people’s experience with body armor. Soldiers hit by fragmentation and pistol rounds in their plates report not really feeling it. 7.62x39mm packs a punch. 7.62x54mmR is a very, very, bad time. I read one account from an infantryman in a Humvee whose squadmate was on the .50 cal up top. The squadmate got shot by an insurgent sniper with 7.62x54mmR. It knocked the air out of him for a minute, but he got back up on the gun. A short time later, he got shot again by the same sniper. This time he was so injured he couldn’t get himself up to man the gun a second time. For reference: 7.62x54mmR: 3,000 Joules 7.62x39mm: 2,100 Joules 5.56x45mm: 1,750 Joules .44 Magnum: 1,500 Joules .45 ACP: 600 Joules 9x19mm: 500 Joules Javelin throw: 300 Joules 170 lb longbow: 130 Joules Avg. Underhand Spear thrust: 100 Joules I’ve never heard of someone dying from blunt force trauma after being shot though.
@@QualityPen I've heard of it, but not from kevlar/armor, but from being narrowly missed by a large caliber, being killed by the blunt force of the air displaced by the bullet
@@konstantinriumin2657 Considering what medical technology they had at the time, the only thing that would prevent that outcome in that scenario would be Divine intervention, _Deus ex Machina_ ... 👍
The thing that bothered me the most of the example photos of people wearing it incorrectly is that most of those shots are during winter. who wants to wear metal with direct skin contact in winter.
The point is that most fantasy mail is inaccurate, real mail would never be in contact with the skin, it would either go over a padded jacket or be directly sown to a cloth layer.
@@kam2150 Wonder how they shot the scenes without hair getting tangled with the mail, especially more so with butted mail rather than riveted mail, which would make it painful and uncomfortable to wear. Then there's the weather conditions too, can't be comfortable when it gets cold during winter or hot during summer. People, including movie/show directors, need to consult with at least history books, or historians.
This perfectly illustrates the concept of blunt force damage. Even a weapon designed to cut things, will still provide a hefty amount of blunt force damage even when it is prevented from cutting. Also, this is why practice weapons tend to have more flexibility so as to help prevent this force from going into your sparring partner.
This doesn't mean light armour like this wasn't used. Mailf Coifs of Polish 'Pancerni' (literally 'the Armoured'), did not give much more protection and it was used with some breaks for over 700 hundred years and they did put up a really good fight on the battlefield. Generally speaking, you have to sacrifice resilience against blunt hits for mobility.
@@piotrmalewski8178 I mean, then why not wear a light padding under it to actually absorb some blunt impact? It's not like it'd suddenly affect your mobility by doing that, and if anything; it'd be way more comfortable having light padding under a mail coif unless you like your face being in constant contact with mail.
@@user-tzzglsstle585e38 I'm not saying it wasn't used. If you look at historical armour from anywhere, it's clear it was designed to have padding underneath. I was just (unclearly) referring to the fact that mail+padding was practical even if it didn't protect from blunt hits. I've seen those historical mail coifs, and it's clear they had to be wearing a lot of soft material underneath.
@@piotrmalewski8178 It makes sense that the Pancerni would be lightly armoured considering the rest of their typical armaments. As far as I know, they'd typically fight on horseback using a mix of melee and ranged weapons and a light coat of armour would make sense if their tactics were predominantly one of skirmishing rather than formation fighting, relying on speed to keep out of danger. In that scenario, suits of chainmail could help protect against ex. an attacker trying to catch up to them for strikes or a against a random arrow, where the force of the strike most likely would't be as significant as that of a warrior with both feet planted on the ground.
I've seen someone at a LARP, on a very hot day, wear butted mail without a shirt. Within a few minutes, they were howling, and wishing they had either worn a shirt or shaved their chest beforehand. At the same LARP I used to wear a 1mm thick steel helmet over a thick (1/2" or so?) fleece cap and never had complaint of pain from accidental head shots.
They would wear a padded coif under the chainmail and helmet. Generally they would use a thin Linen coif, a padded coif, chainmail, and then the helmet.
That thing is definitely protecting you from the sharpness of the sword. The sword wouldn't cut you. But, since your dummy stuck on that pole and can't even move, it will take all the sword's swing thurst, thats why maybee you should try to make your dummy movement more natural. Humans would have a motion reaction when they were hit, not stand still like that. (Sorry about my messy English).
@@matimus100 Did not expect people will talk about this and famous he has sword yup. Lmao good question it just depend what you mean 2 type of sword in 2 religion. For, Christian jesus will definitely came a sword, But a “sharp long sword” for executioner in a sky clouds you see in his holster a sword weapon. In. his word “sharp long sword” breath out mouth to destroy nation, a Holy sword and sword of spirit. It more or less it his own sword a magical one. Just, using God words to destroy! In, Islam he descend on Damascus isa mosque himself with two righted wing angel grab him like a eagle. He will carry as sword and lance and to return as old mighty warrior not as a prophet title. So, he be carry sword lace you find those horse mount and yes but a sword again etc on God sword special holy sword etc. Allah will also come down only for a Allah word to destroy them and from praying from prophet isa and etc.
worst part of the fantasy coifs to me is that they often would have long hair and imagining that getting tangled in chainmail makes me HOPE the sword blow will just kill me
I've worn different chain mail coifs with and without a cap between the chain and my hair. None of them ever rip or catch my top-of-the-head hair at all. My BEARD on the other hand...
@@lunchbox1553 My hair has been anywhere from short to almost afro when I've worn a coif. I have curly hair--the kind you would think gets caught in chainmail... but it doesn't. I must be destined to be a knight! :D
There's a reason why one of the most common upgrades for a low born soldier is an actual helmet. There's simply nothing that comes close to protecting that part of the body.
Also the reason helmets stuck around as long as they did and later came back in the age of firearms. Protecting your head is very important! Edit: spelling.
Even back then (and I say that as if everyone was a knuckle-dragging moron until 1900) people were pretty damn aware of the fact that if a bone in your arm, or a bone in your ribcage gets broken, you're probably not going to die from that, at least right away anyway. But if a bone gets broken in your skull, they figured out that usually kills you pretty dead.
It's also one of the easiest parts of the body to have basic levels of armour. Basically anywhere else you have to worry a lot about mobility as well as weight. On a head a bucket in a few sizes with adjustable padding or webbing etc beneath is all you need.
A simple bicycle helmet without any mail on top, amazingly protects against all medieval weaponry. Yet with static force people can crush it without any tools.
I been wearing one of these everyday for the past couple of months. I instantly get respect. Ppl move aside when they see me coming. At work my boss is so impressed he won't even talk to me anymore.
@@lostalone9320 Can you imagine Preston as real estate agent? Or deli worker, car sales man, insurance agent or even better, a doctor? Imagine that your doctor forces you to stare in the eyes of skull and tell him the truth. Wow, I kinda like this image :D
I thought the title read "mail coifs are stupid" and I was about to comment "did skallagrim get hit in the head while not wearing a padded coif under his chainmail coif?" But than I realized he put FANTASTY in the title
@@Evra22 he's demonstrating how people in fantasy wear the coif wrong. Even a riveted chainmail coif won't do much without a proper helmet or a lot of padding so those shitty butted chainmail coifs in fantasy are even more useless
@@griffinkelley8785 Where did he saw them except one mentioned movie? Because I love fantasy in every form and tbh never saw someone wearing it in such a stupid way so I would rather say it's a mishap of an(few?) movies, rather than fantasy thingy
@@Evra22 That mishap is so common in fantasy, that it can be called a trope all by itself. Like swords being insanely thick and oversized to the point of being just massive bar maces. A common mistake/misunderstanding, but one so common that it has become a thing people shoot for and not just an embarrassing mistake.
@@qwormuli77 I got curious now and search but I only see tons of people doing this but can't find a game or something. But you sound quite sure about it so I guess it happens in fantasy live-action movies or series more than in games and animated series
I would like to see a comparison of what a glancing blow does with and without armor. I feel like this is much more what chain is able to deal with: turning a blow that was only partly parried into something more survivable.
Well the thing is is that with mail you wear padding underneath it so that it will absorb the additional energy but without that padding it's basically just going to turn it into a narrow Club. But that could be interesting to see regardless.
its kinda crazy that in the movies mail coifs are usually worn without the padding, like can you imagine how incredibly uncomfortable that would be if you have any hair on your head, not to mention that it would have the complete opposite effect, instead of protecting the head it would serve as another layer of metal that would help crush your skull
That's because movie (and TV show) makers usually don't consult with historians or history books. And like some, including Skall, hinted that movie/show makers prefer not to hide the face of the actors as much as possible. Stupid reasoning for sure, but it's the reason they do it that way.
The great thing about the real human skull is that it is segmneted and porus so the force is better delt with It's ment to minimize damage But anyone takeing a sword strike will be damaged Fun video thanks
Correct, that cracking would be very unlikely to happen to a real skull - but the blow would almost certainly still be lethal / crippling. Funny thing about concussive force, it can kill you without leaving much of a mark on you. Soldiers in Iraq who were quite some distance from large IEDs that detonated would sometimes get killed - yet there wasn't a mark on their body. The concussive force of a large bomb blast however, while not strong enough to tear their flesh and bones at distance, was still more than sufficient to essentially scramble their mushy brains into soup, killing them. Same goes for blows to the head.. doesn't need to break the skull, if the concussive force was sufficient to jostle the brain hard enough it can either become severely damaged or develop internal bleeding which means you're good as dead.. if not immediately, for sure within a few hours or a couple days.
I mean in some of those depictions I can see there's like their head is like bulbous so I mean it could be safe to assume that they wore a lot of padding underneath. Which you know you get enough padding up there and it'll certainly prevent damage to the bone and even make a lot of less powerful hits hardly even give you a headache but with more powerful hits I mean there's not much you're going to do about your neck breaking because no matter how much padding or how much protection you have on your head if you get hit too hard your neck is just going to snap
@@borttorbbq2556 Padding / armor also offers very little defense against concussive force, as american football players know all too well. Helmets are great at preventing broken skulls and lacerations... but can't stop your brain from sloshing around inside your skull from sudden impact to the head, damaging itself against the inside of your own skull.
@@Hathur high quality American football helmets mitigate the vast majority of concusive force, there's a reason some of these helemets are over 50,000 us dollars.
@@probablynotdad6553 So are they padded on the outside now too, instead of just hard plastic shells? Because that should actually mitigate the concussive force a little too.
I always thought of mail coifs as intended to prevent cuts to the major vessels in the neck rather than head protection… always thought the lack of actual helmets was weird.
That, and protecting your ears and scalp in a shield wall when their thrust misses and they drag the blade back along your head, hard. Testing impacts on a chainmaille coif is essentially the same as testing most military helmets from the last century as to how well they'll stop direct bullet impact. It won't work, because that's not their purpose.
I had a similar thought as well. A full coif is the simplest way I can think to hold mail up around other vulnerable places. The video exhibits a bit of survivorship bias by demonstrating the negatives of examples from fiction rather than demonstrating the positives of examples from the historical record, imho.
Yea the mail is like cloth and can change its shape. I'm not sure why they are surprised it doesn't absorb any impact. It's like wearing a bulletproof vest jumping off the building and belly-flop to the ground and surprised the person die
@@BlueLeon2287 that's his point: mail by itself (which is what you see in a lot of movies or games) is fine for stopping the cutting edge but not so much blunt force trauma.
It's because we don't intuitively understand how much force is generated by a long lever. A sword is about the same length and weight as a baseball bat.
I imagine in a battle, there isn’t going to be just full on swinging blows directly to the dome. Most of the cuts are glancing blows because of the chaos. They definitely protect against cuts and scrapes or else they wouldn’t have bothered
It's multilayered structure and you add more layers as you get less broke. Poor and not in the militia? Bare or thick hat. Doesn't save you from direct blows, but might help with grazes and will save from knocking yourself out hitting the deck or hitting a tree while running. Militia? You get extra leather layer that will give more blunt protection, some degree of rain protection and less grabbing points. You also may get rented mail/these small metal sheet clad leathers (In some cultures you could get weird mesh thingies). Rich militia or regular? You get proper helmet over mail sock and might even hope for higher ups to let you roll with breastplate. Then you get more and more extras from there.
Totally appreciate the content guys. It's awesome! Piece of advice. There were times the camera feller was looking at the impact site with his eyes not the camera. Felt like we were missing out on some cool sh*#. Not a negative on y'all. Always room for improvement.
A few comments on points that people have made so far: - If you think the test setup is unrealistic because it's too rigid, I disagree. The analog neck is more flexible than a real one, due to lack of muscle tension, and the stand itself does have some give. In the slowmo replays you can see how the whole thing shifts around. Real life is not like movies or video games, where people are flung about like limp ragdolls. :) - A living opponent might be able to shed some of the impact energy by moving the head backward, which is of limited use against a descending blow. If they try to dodge they would either evade the blade altogether or shift the point of impact higher on the blade, where it has less mass and would indeed do less damage. However, they might also be moving *forward* and be caught by an attack or counter to an unexpected opening, thereby amplifying the force. - The accuracy of any head analog is always debatable. All I can say is that these skulls clearly have a high degree of anatomical accuracy in terms of shape and thickness. The other weapon tests I've done on this head (without protection), which you'll see in later videos, seemed intuitively convincing to me. Even if this material cracks more easily than a real skull, it still serves to illustrate how much energy is absorbed. Severe concussions and brain hemorrhaging are more than plausible. - Like I pointed out in the video, a mail coif would definitely offer decent protection against light hits, and it's most definitely much better than nothing. Just imagine how much it would hurt and disorient you to receive a sword cut like that though. From sparring I can tell you that hard strikes can be quite painful even under a padded fencing mask. And that's something that often bothers me in movie fights... characters are damage sponges, taking all kinds of crazy hits left right and center, without any real consequences. Anyway, armor is always a compromise between protection and mobility / comfort. Even the most well designed, precisely fitted armor is going to be somewhat exhausting (and hot) to fight in. Mail or plate doesn't turn you into a lumbering snail but it sure is a handicap compared to moving in clothing or light armor. Personally I'd rather wear either a helmet (or coif + helmet) or nothing, but it's a personal choice with its pros and cons. Either way, it needs to be *proper* mail, made of tightly woven rings of sufficient thickness, tailored for a snug fit with good coverage, and worn on top of sturdy padding.
You know I find one of the true and tested just universal fantasy armor.. power armor, with a little energy shield do you know like the HEV suit.. or the LOL maximum speed suit from crisis, not only does it have drugs upon which I figured at this point both protagonists are hopelessly dependent, but it's easy to move in it stops bullets and blades, and anything except for source engine ladders really, but I mean let's face it that might just be old Gordon trying to get that sweet sweet morphine administered.. like there's no reason that the guy should launch himself off the ladder like that... But from what I can tell it works way better than than chainmail you know it also protects against some things that you know an environmental hazards that would just pop those links like Skittles, that had been put in the freezer...
It's hot in Arabia, wearing cumbersome armor will cook them in their armor. So they have to wear lighter armor or no armor at all and rely on mobility for protection. Furthermore, in Islamic era, their faith is their armor, which make sense because of the harsh condition they live in.
@@MizanQistina The average year round temperature of the middle east is 86F. Now we are talking a very large body of land. That is the median of the whole year. So, Yes, it shoots up in the summers. Then drops in the winters. Like at the peak of the curve is Aug at about 110F. The lowest dip is at 64F. It is dry and that is why it is a pain in the ass to live there. It does snow in some countries in the middle east. Israel, Saudi Arabia, Lebanon, Iran, Jordan, Oman and the United Arab Emirates. So yes you could go and wear crazy heavy armor. Winters, and short periods of time in the summer. Like when you know you are going to go around killing a bunch of people.
I've seen someone get knocked unconscious by a relatively low velocity soccer ball to the head. I also know enough about torque to know that ~3lbs of ~3ft long sword (impact is based on impact point to hilt distance, not total sword length) would do some serious damage.
When even a single hit can be death or eventual death or a horrible life afterwards, even armor that only stops glancing or incidental strikes is pretty nice. An actual target would also probably be moving away from the blow, resulting in less force and a greater likelihood of the blow not making a substantive impact.
Yeah, and a human skull absorbs impacts better than whatever material they use for the bones. Which strangely they don't ever say what it is on their website, but I'm guessing it's pvc.
That's the point of having lighter armour- you're more nimble, have better effective stamina etc. Just look how Polish 'Pancerni' looked like. They used only chainmail with some padding underneath for over 700 years and it worked because is protected from cuts and softened hits from arrows, while they were still very nimble and mobile. East European military history proves you don't have to be a heavy tin can to be adequate against your, even heavily armoured enemies. On the contrary, the lighter formations often proved more efficient. Polish formations were only getting lighter and lighter ever since about XVth century and they were effective against anyone. The Hussars were never even considered heavy cavalry according to West-European standard. Even at the heaviest, early XVIIth century configuration, they were still lighter and carried more offensive weapons instead.
@@joaogomes9405 remember a video where a guy drop one of those "realistic" zomby heads from hip height and its chracked all the way around and leaking brains.... and my favorite is an old dude hitting ballistic torso with a replica captain america shield in the chest and due to the impact the head gets unbalanced and tears of by gravity alone.... these dummys are never a good analoge.
With the damage to the skull I can see the need for the metal skull cap. Although the mail and material hood stop the cut, the concussion force spread out across the skull was devastating.
Yup, which is why helmets pre-date mail by centuries. The sweet spot for protection is a mix of physically preventing contact, absorbing force that is transferred and still being able to see out. Hence hoplite helmet. Ideally you'd want a helmet that didn't physically touch your head at all but that creates awful vision problems. So you end up with padding, a coif, then a helmet and it works somewhat ok.
So what you’re saying is fantasy chain mail turns sharp metal sticks into blunt metal sticks? I think I know why Sauron and Morgoth stuck to maces and hammers. They just cut out the middle man and went the the blunt metal sticks from the start.
@@shadow7988 When you are basically Goliath of Gath but with dark powers and your enemies are squishy Men and Elves swinging an oversized mace around likes it's a toy bat always seems like a wise choice.
Sharp weapons are useful though. If you find yourself going through archers, villagers, or other unarmoured men and women, you want the weapon that will cut the most people in the shortest amount of time. Given that all armies of the day saw fighting other armies as wasteful and a last resort, and there were no 'Geneva Conventions' or anything like that, armies would *prefer* to dodge the enemy armed forces and directly hack into the unarmed occupants of towns and villagers.......
@@Debbiebabe69 Unless you're particularly pissed off at said peasants most Fedual armies wouldn't whole slaughter them. Someone has to shovel shit and plant wheat. Even the most brain dead noble realised that. Burning entire countries to the ground was something a certain Roman senator insisted on. Any even half professional army would be fighting wars of conquest. With the aim of having more to rule over not less.
"not cut into his head" reminds me of the logic of movie explosions where you are safe as long as the fire doesn't touch you. Disregarding that the concussive force of the shockwave made most things into jelly before the open flame even got close.
This is chainmail. Its purpose is to stop cuts. It wont protect from concussive forces. The reason why you explained the padded armor underneath. For its time period this was the best you were going to get. In your video you can see the armor stopping your blade from cutting it. Even when plate armor became a thing chainmail was still used. Chainmail does have a lot of problems towards it. It cant stop piercing type weapons, doesn't resist concussive forces, the process in making it was very tedious(for the time period). But the armor did its job that it was designed to do. That is to stop slashing type attacks. Comparing it to plate armor you can say its bad but a stand alone test on its weakness specifically feels like your not doing this armor justice. This armor still saved lives. That's why it was worn and lasted so long. Fun little bit of info, you can still buy chainmail mittens to use in kitchens to protect from knives while cutting. When you cut food in mass its easy to get going quickly and hit your hand or fingers, the gloves will glide the knife right off your hand.
Well his point was sort of that; as shown in history the way we did it was very different then what's seen even in larping. The head is the one place you should protect from blunt force trauma more than any other, yet the way it's portrayed in popular culture makes it seem like it was effective at jobs it literally had no ability to do. Chainmail gloves only work because you don't swing a meat cleaver into them (and I know this is a meme, but *trust* me on that one). Yea people used the hell out of this shit in history because they mostly didn't use it how we portray them using it, and he was showing us why what is portrayed is dumb
I just saw the meat clever argument and can say that is wrong. You would break your fingers yeah but there would be no cut. I've scene people run their hands through mechanical slicers with chainmail gloves. The chainmail held strong and held the operators broken fingers in place.
I legit had no idea that they used to wear a small helmet beneath the mail, so thanks for the explanation of that 🙂 I genuinely thought the mail/padding combo would have done way more to protect the skull!
Might wear one bellow with a form of turban over it for cushioning, maybe a hood to keep it in place then an aventailed coif which covers the lower face and then a closed great helm over it. Depends on time frame and what cam be afforded by the person. The more you wear the hotter it is and heavier. Depending on technological development it could be more restrictive to sight and movement. Obviously lighter troops will have less restrictive armour and even protection astheare about movement and skirmish. War is a bad place to be and no matter how well armed or armoured anyone can die from battle or disease during campaigning or siege. With the way an object hits the head it can easily crack like an egg even when padded.
guess it depends on the padding to stop the blunt force. the mail protects against piercing and slicing. not gonna do much to stop the force of the blow.
There really is no good way to protect the head. Skill and shield are your best bets. Mitigate or deflect. A helm will save you from glancing blows but even the impact on your head can beak your neck if the helmet holds.
@@talyn3932 ya if you get hit square in the head with a mace youre gonna get fucked up no matter what lol. football helmet youll sstill have a freaking horrible concussion get knocked out fall down break your neck or whatever lol
Mail's ability to resist the cutting edge of a blade while remaining flexible cannot be understated. However as it has no structure to it like plate, blunt force is transferred almost totally unimpeded, even with padding underneath. Ergo, where that freaking helmet, it saves lives!
With the existence of maces, warhammers and other blunt-impact focussed weapons it's easy to forget sometimes that an average sword is still essentially a 1-3 pound bar of super hardened steel and makes a wicked bludgeon in its own right!
Every time I see the fight in Moria with the troll I think that it doesn't matter that Frodo is wearing mithril, that spear thrust would have crushed his chest like a styrofoam cup.
When it comes to magical items everything goes out the window. They could really just make something up about how mithril armor absorbs and dissipates most of the force behind a strike or something
When Frodo gets the magical mithril mail. Bilbo states it hardens like a (dragon) scale when hit. Technologically it would be the dynamic impact absorption. Liquid body armor, intellafoam... today we have protection with such effects.
In my opinion the coif was really about protecting the throat and cheeks, flexible areas that couldn't be rigidly armoured, illustrated by the tailored examples you showed. It would have little purpose if not paired with a helmet but might stop a quick jab or thrust. It just operates as a hood because that makes sense to protect those areas.
Quick jab or thrust or even a cut. This weekend I was playing with my machete (shaped a lot like gladius) and I was surprised how much damage a "stab cut" can do. Stab didn't do that much, stabbing through something is pretty hard and I doubt that the tip would be sharp enough after ten minutes of fighting, but when you aim the cut slightly off center to cut with the whole length of blade, oh boy... Now, the machete was not super sharp anymore, I used it to chop some bushes and so (I think it is a pretty good simulation of blade used for some fighting and not resharpened yet) and my target was old foam mattress. Direct stab went about one or two centimeters deep. A simple slash was good, about two centimeters deep but it was quite big cut, nearly 10 centimeters long. Then slash and cut, that was a good one. 20 centimeters long, 3 centimeters deep. And stab cut went even deeper, it cut 8 to 10 centimeters deep on whole thickness (20 centimeters or so). I tried cut (so place it next to my target and just draw it) and again, pretty good. Now, what I wanted to say. If you can get in close combat and just cut on neck, well, let's say that this guy will not be dancing anytime soon... Mail coif should be enough to stop those cuts.
@Randy Bugger the skull cap will be quite thin, so it will not play a huge role. I was talking about padding, that can be huge problem. And if you use enough padding to not feel the hit, well, you can already wear a tank, because that is how big your padding will be. Anybody can do a simple test, take few t-shirts, fold them, put them on your head and hit it with something. Soon you will realize that the only option would be Spaceball.
I mean projectiles and spears did most of the work with a sword as a back-up(except Romans but they were stab by boys). Landing a solid hit on a moving person’s head who is also trying to kill you was harder than hitting the wrist/arm or legs.
This test was specifically done to show how bad fantasy armor depictions are. This is not indicative of real life. It's also not a real skull, and it's fixed to an inflexible stand. This puts nothing into perspective about any real-life scenario, just fantasy. A real human being with decent armor would not receive the same damage. The force of the blow would move your body much more, absorbing the hit. Our skulls are also much more impact resistant, as our skulls are porous and hydrated. Do not take some RUclips test, that specifies it's about fantasy, and link that to the real world.
Gonna be honest, I actually thought the mail coif and quilted cap would have done more. I also would wager that the fantasy mail coifs are a side effect of the fitting strings possibly deteriorating combined with most artists and writers thinking they were supposed to fit like modern hoods rather than something more formfitting. Or at the very least, a solid full metal helmet over it would have protected from the perceived shortcomings.
The dummy is also braced so it won't fall over and isn't trying to move at all. If somebody was fighting they might move away from the hit and unless they are super bad at fighting the other person might be more tired and slow a little weaker and slower. Still not the best protection but id imagine there would be a few factors that reduce the damage a little more than what a dummy can account for
I agree with Avery this isn't entirely representative. Clearly no armor can ever protect from everything, but a real human has a flinch reflex that has probably got them moving away from the danger quite often, and to me at least that structure looks like it is rather stiffer against the blow than a human would be too. Still a great demo of just how destructive a hit can be even with protection, but in the real world I'd expect concussion over death more often that this testing would imply. And I agree with you somewhat on writers and artists using a modern frame of reference more often as they don't know the historical facts or for artistic reasons have chosen to ignore them. Can't be form fitting if the armor isn't yours, don't want to hide the facial expressions too badly etc.
Not like it's the best representation though, the dummy is set and not moving at all and the pvc material they use for the bones in these ballistics dummies don't behave the same as bone. They are noticeably worse at absorbing impacts, which is why high-end dummies use hardened resin instead which behaves more closely to human bone in that it's porous and shatters into small fragments more than it completely cracks apart.
A literal wooden bucket would have been an upgrade to your mail coif and padding combo, and maybe just enough to rob strength of those direct head hits.
...Hence, the bucket helm,possibly directly descended of the so-called saltshaker pot-helm. Sort of a product-improved version -- first a face plate (also called an aventail, as you breathed through it), follewed very soon by a rather short nape plate which with time got longer. Compare Maciejowski bucket helms to the Dargan and Bolzano helms.
@@jimmyrustler8983 Is what you would get using the coif without anything underneath. imagine your hair getting pinched between the rings and jerked off throwout the day.
Never change Skallagram. You're content is like a comfort food for the spirit. Something I can turn to, too relax, enjoy and learn something new. I appreciate you man. May your endeavors be successful.
There are many historical pictures of people wearing only coifes without an helmet. But they always have weirdly large heads. It looks like they have padding underneath, which is much thicker than what he used in the video. I imagine, with a seriously thick padding, you would be pretty save, even when someone hits you with full power. At least when the weapon is not something like a heavy hammer. In that case, a helmet wouldn't help that much either.
Round helmet under mail, or over it, seemed a matter of taste or of fashion... possibly whether that helmet was a bit too large for wearing beneath the coif.
@@w.reidripley1968 sir it's all about Price. Unless you a merchant or mercenary this would quickly become a waste of valuable tax, church "donation, debt, or food funds.
This bothered me a lot in episode 1 of Rings of Power when Galadriel is only wearing a mail cap in the biting cold, both for these reasons and the complete lack of insulation.
If you know LOTR you can easily imagine there are some enchantement on it or special materials from valinor or something. But yet the ring of power are.... A disappointment
Cold metal against your skin in winter? Oi. Really need to wear some sort of fabric underneath to insulate yourself. Metal cools rapidly when exposed to cold air, along with wind. That'll just suck the warmth out of your body in record time. You might be better off not wearing anything instead.
I think the worst part in all this is that no matter how much chain or plate your wrap the character in, if their face is covered they are likely to be a disposable extra and die in one hit to their heavily-armoured chestplate anyway.
100% - I mean I could kindof understand if it was 'historical' fantasy with say King Arthur stabbing with Excalibur or in examples where someone's getting wailed on by a guy with a polearm or getting charged by a horseman with a lance but it's unforgivable in most 'historical' films that treat steel breastplates like tin foil.
@@Neion8 Amen to that--to be fair I'd even argue it's unforgivable in fantasy films as well. The archetypal Warrior or Paladin is rocking big plate armour for a good reason, and I've seen folks diminish the strength of heavy armour so damn often because of mainstream sources
@@whitsword I mean, 'because magic' is a hard thing to argue against when magic sword beats mundane armour (otherwise what's the point of a magic sword?) - though it's different if both are magical. The thing I find most weird is the swap of blunt force trauma and fire damage - which should go through metal defences - and piercing/slashing attacks which really shouldn't do shit; someone could be smashed through a wall, thrown across a room by an explosion or be engulfed in fire and still be fine but heaven help them if an arrow fired by a skinny teenager with poor technique and a 30lb practice bow hits them even on solid plate. Given the lack of gambeson/padding in most fantasy armour designs, it's even worse that their most glaring weakness is seemingly a non-issue.
@@Neion8 Oh well, of course magical/enchanted weapons, or even strong creatures that can wield gigantic blades, are entirely fine by me. My issue with that is mostly when it comes to poons fighting poons in big battle scenes and whatnot. It always feels like those random soldiers are wearing armour for literally no reason. Sometimes these kinds of settings would benefit from making a bigger deal out of the chads wearing full plate and making them less numerous, and include more of those less-armoured, militia-like soldiers to keep the death count up. Cause in some settings, it really feels like "that one likely overpriced plate armour is the standard" and that's about all you see human footmen wear in battle, and it just doesn't protect them anyway!
@@whitsword Very true - the problem is then the narrative would be very obvious with the wealthy adventurers/nobles in full plate slaughtering legions of barely armed, barely trained peasents who've been forced into combat and yet supposedly being the good guys because they're fighting for the same order that kept their enemies downtrodden. Actually, on second thought that makes it better as writers will have to work a little harder on giving characters y'know - actual characteristics and values to root for - other than just being the MC and therefore in the right.
I read somewhere once that it was also important not to swing too hard because you risked your weapon getting wedged in your opponent's body. Then you're standing there trying to wiggle your sword out of some guy's head while he his brother is running up with a vengeful look in his eyes.
Nah. The D&D armour class system isn't representing how likely the enemy is to hit, but to land a hit that can injure. Getting -3 AC from armour (or +3 nowadays) doesn't mean 15% of attacks will now be dodged, but that 15% of incomibg attacks will "miss" your unprotected body, as in they hit, but they hit your armour instead of your flesh. It's not 100% realistic of course, but the general videogame damage reduction system isn' better either, because tgere you wear padding plus full plate and yet a sword strike hitting the plate will somehow cause bleeding.
You are supposed to use the mail in conjunction with your training, and other weaponery The mail is for glacning off a richicheting blade after blade to blade contact, it does not give you invincibility to sword strikes Likewise, in our time, our body armors such as kevlar and ceramic plates, are designed to absorb as much impact as possible before the bullet hits you This mean a bullet vest does not make you in impervious to bullets, it only make you resistant to it. Many the right caliburs can still cause harm and death regarless of what body armor we are wearing Besides the ones we are not told about
A secret is such a practical and universal thing that polypropylene versions are cheap and plentiful to this day. Ideal for blue collar workers, DIYers, and anyone who expects to work around a lot shelves, awkward tight spaces, or pine trees.
@@Winchester7734 well basic motor bike helmets are designed to protect the nogging when you come off. Sport helmets even more so! Same with horse helmets
@@Winchester7734 careful with the police riot gear... youtube might go "this is a torurial on how to injure law enforcement" as they did with the slingshot channel
Yeah I mean, don’t movie extras or actors ever complain of the misery the coif idiotism causes? Or do they just suck it up and think ”wow, this really sucked hundreds of years ago”? Of course, they might not have much of a say in any case…
@@aapelikahkonen I have a feeling they probably put some sort of hair net / cap on them to stop that from happening honestly, like what they do when they put a wig on someone they have that little cap to cover their real hair, I’m not sure though honestly, I was a stage actor for a while but I honestly have no experience with mail coifs even costume ones
@@aapelikahkonen Yes, in situations where there has been any skin-on-mail contact for a long period of time (even in tiny cases, such as mail sleeves being slightly longer than the fabric beneath, meaning mail only touches the cuff), actors have reported that hairs can and do get caught in the links, and its generally a very abrasive material.
The results for exactly what I expected. The problem with maille on your head is that maille is flexible. You don't have muscle and tissue to help absorb the blow like you would on most of your body. This is one reason why I feel rigid helms came about before rigid body defenses; in most cases.
Also, along with muscles and fat, limbs are quite flexible, which dissipates a portion of the impact. Getting hit on the head from above, the only flexibility you're getting is if your spine cracks and collapses
hey Skal just a suggestion, cos its hard to get an accurate test on the 2nd hit with more padding, because the skull is already cracked and weakened by the first hit it might make more sense from a testing pov if you start with the most protection like coif + helmet etc. then work your way down so you can see the minimum amount of armour you need for protection
Little feedback on the length of the video: Really liked it This short format is perfect for me, someone with ADD, after a full day of work and then household after that Little quick dose of information that's easily watchable for me without having to strain my attention span (especially after my ADD meds have worn out for the day)
While I absolutely agree with the sentiment that wearing just chainmail for head protection is suboptimal, I think it's a bit overstated here. 1. Oxygenated human bones and tissue are known to be considerably stronger than these analogue dummies are. Not so much that the results in these tests are necessarily not representative of reality, but it's still not entirely accurate to the durability of a human skull. 2. Because of how this dummy is set up, it's taking the brunt of the force primarily on it's skull without any sort of force dissipation whatsoever. While a person standing upright getting hit by this would be hurt for sure, the amount of damage caused would be lessened by the fact they'd most likely react physically to the injury as it's happening, have the impact force far more efficiently dissipated through their skull and their body in general, a wood stand that keeps the head in roughly the same position even as it's impacted isn't representative of how someone being hit would react. 3. Mail coifs are better than absolutely nothing, as it is said in the video. Even if this was entirely, 100% accurate, your poor victim would still have at minimum the same amount of damage represented here if they had nothing on. Chances are it'd be even worse. But as it is said in the video, again, this isn't exactly the type of thing a coif would be expected to reasonably protect from, so it's by far the least big issue.
One thing to note is that bone isn't that hard when people are alive, they're far more flexible, otherwise a simple jump would crack them, but even with the flexibility, getting hit in the head by something is not pleasant.
While only using about 70% power is good there are two other factors you might want to consider: 1) You probably should do some glancing blows. You did mention them but it would help to illustrate the 'better than nothing' factor. Of course that means you also have you need to do some hits with no armor at all for comparison , which would also be good to see even with the direct hits. Sure, that cracked skull was very bad news and probably ultimately fatal, especially in the middle ages, but what would the effect have been of the identical blow with no protection. 2) You probably should do something so that the target has more 'give'. A person hit like that will have their head snap to the side and will also have their center of mass propelled away (they won't go flying away, but they will stagger). Both of these things would lessen the moment of impact enough that whatever armor is being tested might perform far better. Neither of which are meant to imply that you are wrong about the inaccuracies about how coifs are shown. Merely that these factors may help provide more realistic results to your examples.
This, I kept thinking if someone can stand that hard against a blow, likely they’ll rank the brain damage long enough it won’t matter and keep fighting until they drop. They should have a system that buckles under certain pounds of force similar to how humans react, they aren’t wooden super sturdy braces with heads and arms. Also wish the bone material behaved like real bones instead of cracking everywhere, because you might get a skull fracture from the hits, but it would be less due to how bones absorb impacts and how the body reacts.
In terms of protection against concussions and any damage in general the weight of the armor has to offer some of the resistance. Not only are they hitting your 11 pound head, that head has a 5 pound helmet on it. Even if the energy is all imparted and it doesn't penetrate they are now trying to accelerate an object that is much heavier. That means less acceleration in general and less damage to the brain from shaking around.
The heavier head will still work against you in some ways because of the slower acceleration. This is because the force of the sword hitting the head will be greater, but for a shorter amount of time.
The cap isn't really going to prevent concussion (that is what the padded cap is for), but rather it is there to distribute the load so your skull doesn't crack. It is an armor system, the mail to prevent the cut, the cap to distribute the force, and the padded hood to take the sting out of everything. Any individual piece is insufficient, but as a whole they are pretty good.
Great video! Thanks for testing this. So many weapons vs armor tests simply hit the armor with weapons, see that the armor is fine, then assume that the target beneath the armor would be fine.
I think you should've used a marker to draw lines over the cracks made with each blow, to get an accurate measure of how much damage you did each time. It's all too easy to mistakenly think the second and subsequent blows did more damage than you thought it did, because you got confused which blow caused which crack.
A subsequent blow is a blow to a compromised structure. It shows the cumulated damage. It will not show the damage that would have been done to a fresh skull anyway. OTOH those dummies may be too expensive to perform every strike against a new dummy.
The only reason to be in battle with only a mail coif would be that your helmet got knocked off or you got ambushed and didn't have a helmet on at the time.
You would not put a coif on in that case, as it would be nearly useless to you and take you time to find it and put it on. Also, it wouldn't be shaped for your unpadded head. You would be grabbing a weapon and getting into position to support your comrades in arms and they you.
I also think it’s important to look at the whole “kit” a warrior would be wearing. In times of chainmail coifs we clearly see that they were a minor help against sufficient blows and may turn glancing hits from fatal into injuries. A win already. Add a metal cap or helm and I think most of these would turn the “cracked skull” into a concussion (from a 1h weapon at least). Add a nasal and cheek guards and now slashes to the front and sides of the face may be mitigated slightly. This is also why the people of that era often fought with shields. Protection against getting hit in the first place. And the chain and pad helms turn any deflections or stray hits into relatively harmless blows. Once armor got good, shields weren’t needed bc the armor WAS proof against most weapons. So you needed bigger and badder weapons. As someone who does SCA armored fighting the amount of small incidental hits from friend and foe in a big melee are not insignificant haha.
What you're saying sounds a lot like the survivability chain of an MBT minus the stealth aspect: 1: Try not to be hit. 2: If you are hit, try to deflect it. 3: If you can't deflect it, try not to be penetrated/damaged. 4: If you are gonna be damaged/your armour penetrated then try to minimise the wounds that get through. 4: If you can't minimise the damage, then compartmentalise it so you can keep fighting - ergo a broken arm is better than a severed one due to less blood loss and a cracked skull is better than getting your head opened up like a can because with the adrenaline pumping through you, you might have a few more attacks left in you before you succumb to your wounds during which time you might avenge yourself and/or save an ally's life and help win the battle or cover a retreat. Sometimes armour is less about keeping you alive personally and more about better exploiting your death for the benefit of your army. A chain coif might be worse than certain helmet designs for parts 3 and 4 but be less of a hinderance to you for aspects 1 and 2 due to more of its weight resting on your shoulders than your head; making your head lighter and thefore easier to lean out of the way of - or angle against - a strike. Also, any armour will decrease the likelihood of you getting RIP'd by a random arrow before you can contribute to the battle which is also nice.
@@Neion8 I don't think the weight of the chain would be a big factor tbh. I would WAY rather have a helmet than have my head be more nimble. One factor I WILL say, is that as someone who fight en masse in battles in the SCA, wearing the armor makes you FEEL more protected, and are therefor more likely to put yourself in daring and dangerous situations that the battle at hand may call for. When i am in my full armor, with a good helmet and shield, I feel pretty "safe" running into groups of enemies and fighting. I will almost definitely get hit but I know it's not going to hurt too bad etc. It can make you "braver" in that respect. Even if the chain coif doesn't really do anything against certain types of strikes, it may allow you to fight more confidently because your fears of being struck are somewhat subsided.
Lindybeige did a great one on this. He basically made a gambeson for his skull to go under the coif, it looked funny, but it looked just like most of the painting la I’ve seen. Really cool to see ballistic tests on this.
It's pretty much common sense that a complex cranial fracture means probable death within 48 hours. If there's visible hemorrhaging it's probably much shorter.
@@adamb8317 Exactly, and in the rare cases where people miraculously survive such a fracture, it's purely luck and the doctor wouldn't even be able to tell. You can't tell from the outside how bad the brain is messed up, how much bleeding, which parts of the brain are damaged.
This is why the Norman knights at Hastings and the First Crusade wore nasal helmets over the mail coif. Even later Crusader knights used great helms for protection over their coifs.
Erm why point them out over anyone else? It implies others did it differently. The mail coif came around after the helmet, and never superseded it? It was an addition to head and neck defence
@@tommeakin1732 the main use was against arrows not direct strike. It was to reduce the penetration of arrows with the hope they will bounce off the areas that the helmet couldn't protect
@@tommeakin1732 Correct. Polish 'Pancerni' had a sort metal cap just over their heads, integral with mail coif. It protected against hit from over head, but not from the side. This pattern was used for over 700 years, and given battle results, it was good. Generally speaking, in Eastern Europe lighter armour allowing for more endurance and mobility was favoured and proven very effective. Even against heavy West-European cavalry. Who cares about having a chance of surviving a blow to head (still bruised though), when lighter and flexible armour gives you ability to dodge, better see what's going on, change positions on the battlefield more easily and march more miles every day. The mails of Pancerni were only dropped when firearms got so good and battles relied on them so heavily, it didn't make sense to wear armour at all. Untill then, they were doing a damn good job, whatever the century or enemy.
The greathelm would have been worn over a skull cap and coif. Which was because the greathelm would be thrown off once knights got into close quarter fights. It's vision was way too restrictive for the protection to be a net benefit. This is why it is often depicted with a chain that connects it to the breastplate: This way it could just be dropped without loosing it. It was, in a way, a predecessor to the articulated visor, which you'd put down during a charge, but raise in close quarter fighting.
@@Marveryn I think you're wrong to try to be that specific, and as far as threats go, mail isn't exactly that well optimised for stopping arrows, at least from what I've seen. It seems to primarily excel at stopping cuts, and reducing that force to blunt trauma. The significance of mail covering the neck is *huge* as even relatively weak cuts there can be lethal. Mail there would absolutely save you against a direct strike
Whilst I fully concur with what you are saying, it should be pointed out that often the aim of armor was to reduce damage, not eliminate it. Killing wound to major wound for example, major wound to minor wound. You do miss out on a fairly obvious fantasy problem with no padding though... the hair being pulled out when taking the coif off.
Yup sadly however.....without the helmet under it these were all killing wounds at that point in time. Probably even today. However when you look at actual artwork of the era, in most cases they seem to have a lot of something on their heads. Be it just padding or another helmet under the mail. Their heads look so bulbous. That can't always be artistic license.
Nah, I'm fairly sure anyone donning armour would rather get away with no damage worth mentioning, not just turn killing blows into injuries. Not to mention, injuries that today would heal completely were often deadly in the past due to nonexistent medical know-how, so soldiers would rather avoid any injuries beyond minor scrapes.
@@herrakaarme Graves of warriors would contradict that assumption with examples of chipped bones etc. Of course having no wounds is preferable but no armor makes you invulnerable. You may also consider why full armor wasn't always used even when cost wasn't a factor. Only a breastplate for example when speed became more valuable than a layer of metal between you and the enemy. It's a matter of compromise.
@@freakygoblin3068 I'd fully agree with you here, if not for your choice of words: "aim of armor was to..." The aim of most warriors would have been to make it out of the battle as an uninjured winner or at least an uninjured survivor. If a lord provided armor for his men, he might not have cared that much about their individual lives, save for his favourites, but most of the time he still would have wanted minimal casualties to keep his side strong, so his aim would be only minor damage. This was quite pedantic, sorry about that, but I was just feeling pedantic after seeing someone mention Rings of Power in another comment.
There is one other thing, that is not mentioned there: As the chainmail moves, it's going to "sink through" any and all body hair it is straight under it, ripping it off of the skin in the proces… Also, there were cases, back in early LARP years, where people (LARPing as Conan-style barbarians) were wearing chainmail over naked skin, with solar heat and excercise eventually grafting their chainmail INSIDE their skin…
In your picture you have long hair. I know what happens to hair like that when you put mail coif directly on it. On one hand, it is horrible to see when somebody does that, but on the other hand, it is amazing fun when somebody is "big tough guy who can wear chainmail directly without that padded cap that is only for pussies".
Instead of a sword, you should take a saber or a dagger. The chain mail hood should save from cutting blows and help a little from arrows falling at the end. This is not a replacement for a full-fledged helmet that can withstand a blow from a sword. Therefore, it is not very correct to test a mail hood in the same way as a helmet.
The real reason why fantasy mail coifs are stupid is because obviously if you don't wear any head protection then it means you're a main character so you're more likely to survive.
Or a nameless background extra whose only purpose is to die.
@@ShummaAwilum
It's really a 50/50.
But if you see another guy without head gear survive, you're probably the extra.
Plot. The strongest material.
They have plenty of plot armor to protect them.
@@Alyrael easier to just see if he's better looking or looks more important than you. if yes, you should go find a good helmet posthaste.
My takeaway from this is that it's a good idea to avoid being in situations where people swing swords directly at your head.
I haven't made any particular effort to avoid it and I've never been in such a scenario myself :D
just go into the fucking woods when your lord starts the levy
I saw a video on worldstar of a chap getting an axe to the top of the head, he was sitting looking down and an insane fella just swung it atop him. Gruesome, and sickening. As to why I watched, like to remind myself that the world is a dangerous place, and best to be aware around strangers.
Hitting head with sturdy objects = bad.
thats an interesting take most people probably dont see. but now that u mention it. seems accurate
I feel like this the medieval equivalent of kevlar stopping a bullet but not preventing blunt force trauma.
If you're alive to bitch about how much it hurts then you're still alive. That's what kevlar does.
@@CollinMcLean Blunt force trauma can still be fatal. People don't use baseball bats and clubs as weapons because they tickle.
@@SergeantPsycho Kevlar protection ratings take blunt force trauma into account. Luckily, the pistol rounds which Kevlar can stop in the first place aren’t very energetic.
It’s the same story with rifle/ballistic plates and rifle rounds. Those spread the energy of the bullet over a larger area.
I’ve done a fair bit of reading about people’s experience with body armor. Soldiers hit by fragmentation and pistol rounds in their plates report not really feeling it. 7.62x39mm packs a punch. 7.62x54mmR is a very, very, bad time.
I read one account from an infantryman in a Humvee whose squadmate was on the .50 cal up top. The squadmate got shot by an insurgent sniper with 7.62x54mmR. It knocked the air out of him for a minute, but he got back up on the gun. A short time later, he got shot again by the same sniper. This time he was so injured he couldn’t get himself up to man the gun a second time.
For reference:
7.62x54mmR: 3,000 Joules
7.62x39mm: 2,100 Joules
5.56x45mm: 1,750 Joules
.44 Magnum: 1,500 Joules
.45 ACP: 600 Joules
9x19mm: 500 Joules
Javelin throw: 300 Joules
170 lb longbow: 130 Joules
Avg. Underhand Spear thrust: 100 Joules
I’ve never heard of someone dying from blunt force trauma after being shot though.
exactly :) because neither were designed to stop blunt force trauma, lol. dude is an idiot... lol
@@QualityPen I've heard of it, but not from kevlar/armor, but from being narrowly missed by a large caliber, being killed by the blunt force of the air displaced by the bullet
Sucks when your armor just turns a sword into an ultra thin mace.
At least it's a suboptimal mace rather than an optimal sword
That first sword blow would have been likely a delayed fatality.
@@richard6133 Without mail it would have been guaranteed fatality
@@konstantinriumin2657
Considering what medical technology they had at the time, the only thing that would prevent that outcome in that scenario would be Divine intervention, _Deus ex Machina_ ... 👍
Go on people and make this into an Ace Attorney thing.
That slo-mo slap was hilariously real.
Almost reminded me of the Mythbusters one, lol
And a pretty spot on Jesse Pinkman imitation there as well.
I find it really hilarious instead
It made my palm hurt just to watch it
Ottoman Slap!!
The thing that bothered me the most of the example photos of people wearing it incorrectly is that most of those shots are during winter. who wants to wear metal with direct skin contact in winter.
Imagine the poor actors too. You know they are thinking “I wish I had a cap” lmao
@@michaelsills8038 also double poor actors if they have longer hair and wear coif with nothing in between, even fabric cap.
Welp, it is definitely not better on the hot summer day, I tell you that.
The point is that most fantasy mail is inaccurate, real mail would never be in contact with the skin, it would either go over a padded jacket or be directly sown to a cloth layer.
@@kam2150 Wonder how they shot the scenes without hair getting tangled with the mail, especially more so with butted mail rather than riveted mail, which would make it painful and uncomfortable to wear. Then there's the weather conditions too, can't be comfortable when it gets cold during winter or hot during summer. People, including movie/show directors, need to consult with at least history books, or historians.
This perfectly illustrates the concept of blunt force damage.
Even a weapon designed to cut things, will still provide a hefty amount of blunt force damage even when it is prevented from cutting.
Also, this is why practice weapons tend to have more flexibility so as to help prevent this force from going into your sparring partner.
This doesn't mean light armour like this wasn't used. Mailf Coifs of Polish 'Pancerni' (literally 'the Armoured'), did not give much more protection and it was used with some breaks for over 700 hundred years and they did put up a really good fight on the battlefield.
Generally speaking, you have to sacrifice resilience against blunt hits for mobility.
@@piotrmalewski8178 I mean, then why not wear a light padding under it to actually absorb some blunt impact?
It's not like it'd suddenly affect your mobility by doing that, and if anything; it'd be way more comfortable having light padding under a mail coif unless you like your face being in constant contact with mail.
@@user-tzzglsstle585e38 I'm not saying it wasn't used. If you look at historical armour from anywhere, it's clear it was designed to have padding underneath. I was just (unclearly) referring to the fact that mail+padding was practical even if it didn't protect from blunt hits. I've seen those historical mail coifs, and it's clear they had to be wearing a lot of soft material underneath.
Yeah. But I guess getting a direct hit with a Steel / iron weapon on the head is never a good idea....
@@piotrmalewski8178 It makes sense that the Pancerni would be lightly armoured considering the rest of their typical armaments.
As far as I know, they'd typically fight on horseback using a mix of melee and ranged weapons and a light coat of armour would make sense if their tactics were predominantly one of skirmishing rather than formation fighting, relying on speed to keep out of danger.
In that scenario, suits of chainmail could help protect against ex. an attacker trying to catch up to them for strikes or a against a random arrow, where the force of the strike most likely would't be as significant as that of a warrior with both feet planted on the ground.
I always couldn't figure out why anyone would wear mail against their scalp... I'm bald and I'm sure it would still pull hair.
Plus, it kinda looks silly to drape mail over your head.
I've seen someone at a LARP, on a very hot day, wear butted mail without a shirt.
Within a few minutes, they were howling, and wishing they had either worn a shirt or shaved their chest beforehand.
At the same LARP I used to wear a 1mm thick steel helmet over a thick (1/2" or so?) fleece cap and never had complaint of pain from accidental head shots.
@@cadethumann8605scott steiner used to do it. Looked really cool but he was a monster
They would wear a padded coif under the chainmail and helmet. Generally they would use a thin Linen coif, a padded coif, chainmail, and then the helmet.
That thing is definitely protecting you from the sharpness of the sword. The sword wouldn't cut you. But, since your dummy stuck on that pole and can't even move, it will take all the sword's swing thurst, thats why maybee you should try to make your dummy movement more natural. Humans would have a motion reaction when they were hit, not stand still like that. (Sorry about my messy English).
I forgive you
I forgive you
I forgive you
Agree.
I forgive you
Mental note,
Do NOT get hit in the head with a sword.👍🏻
Thumbs up for Skallgrim keeping his pimp hand strong!✋🏻
Jesus had a sword what kind of sword was it?
@@matimus100 Did not expect people will talk about this and famous he has sword yup. Lmao good question it just depend what you mean 2 type of sword in 2 religion. For, Christian jesus will definitely came a sword, But a “sharp long sword” for executioner in a sky clouds you see in his holster a sword weapon. In. his word “sharp long sword” breath out mouth to destroy nation, a Holy sword and sword of spirit. It more or less it his own sword a magical one. Just, using God words to destroy!
In, Islam he descend on Damascus isa mosque himself with two righted wing angel grab him like a eagle. He will carry as sword and lance and to return as old mighty warrior not as a prophet title. So, he be carry sword lace you find those horse mount and yes but a sword again etc on God sword special holy sword etc. Allah will also come down only for a Allah word to destroy them and from praying from prophet isa and etc.
@@matimus100 I hope that answer your question in regards to "Jesus had a sword what kind of sword was it?" of 23hrs ago
👍🏼
Try not get hit in the head by anything, a fist can kill you if you are unlucky enough.
You know, I've never seen a skull visibly say "oh hell no" to a slap in slow motion
lol true
*_Shakes head disapprovingly._*
I'm dying 🤣
@@Asirpa_ Now I can do this. 💀👋
worst part of the fantasy coifs to me is that they often would have long hair and imagining that getting tangled in chainmail makes me HOPE the sword blow will just kill me
A cowl is worn underneath the mail for this very reason.
Edit: Even in this video they dressed the dummy up that way.
I wear a turban under mine
@@Cold_Cactus whaaaaat?
Also, can we talk about the sheer amount of hair ripping that would occur with a chain mail hoodie with nothing under it?
Hell, just walking on uneven ground would tear your scalp something fierce
I've worn different chain mail coifs with and without a cap between the chain and my hair. None of them ever rip or catch my top-of-the-head hair at all. My BEARD on the other hand...
@@crazylegoman Are you fucking bald?
@@crazylegoman But how long is your hair? I'd assume it is worse for people with long hair.
@@lunchbox1553 My hair has been anywhere from short to almost afro when I've worn a coif. I have curly hair--the kind you would think gets caught in chainmail... but it doesn't. I must be destined to be a knight! :D
There's a reason why one of the most common upgrades for a low born soldier is an actual helmet. There's simply nothing that comes close to protecting that part of the body.
Also the reason helmets stuck around as long as they did and later came back in the age of firearms. Protecting your head is very important! Edit: spelling.
Even back then (and I say that as if everyone was a knuckle-dragging moron until 1900) people were pretty damn aware of the fact that if a bone in your arm, or a bone in your ribcage gets broken, you're probably not going to die from that, at least right away anyway.
But if a bone gets broken in your skull, they figured out that usually kills you pretty dead.
Leather Helmets were pretty common, especially in Spain.
It's also one of the easiest parts of the body to have basic levels of armour. Basically anywhere else you have to worry a lot about mobility as well as weight.
On a head a bucket in a few sizes with adjustable padding or webbing etc beneath is all you need.
A simple bicycle helmet without any mail on top, amazingly protects against all medieval weaponry. Yet with static force people can crush it without any tools.
I been wearing one of these everyday for the past couple of months. I instantly get respect. Ppl move aside when they see me coming. At work my boss is so impressed he won't even talk to me anymore.
Wearing what, a coif, a sword or skull in gelatin?
All three. It goes coif, then sword, then skull balanced on top, like a boss.
@@lostalone9320 Can you imagine Preston as real estate agent? Or deli worker, car sales man, insurance agent or even better, a doctor? Imagine that your doctor forces you to stare in the eyes of skull and tell him the truth. Wow, I kinda like this image :D
I thought the title read "mail coifs are stupid" and I was about to comment "did skallagrim get hit in the head while not wearing a padded coif under his chainmail coif?" But than I realized he put FANTASTY in the title
What's the difference? It looks basically like an actual mail coif, what's "fantasy" about it?
@@Evra22 he's demonstrating how people in fantasy wear the coif wrong. Even a riveted chainmail coif won't do much without a proper helmet or a lot of padding so those shitty butted chainmail coifs in fantasy are even more useless
@@griffinkelley8785 Where did he saw them except one mentioned movie? Because I love fantasy in every form and tbh never saw someone wearing it in such a stupid way so I would rather say it's a mishap of an(few?) movies, rather than fantasy thingy
@@Evra22 That mishap is so common in fantasy, that it can be called a trope all by itself. Like swords being insanely thick and oversized to the point of being just massive bar maces. A common mistake/misunderstanding, but one so common that it has become a thing people shoot for and not just an embarrassing mistake.
@@qwormuli77 I got curious now and search but I only see tons of people doing this but can't find a game or something. But you sound quite sure about it so I guess it happens in fantasy live-action movies or series more than in games and animated series
I would like to see a comparison of what a glancing blow does with and without armor. I feel like this is much more what chain is able to deal with: turning a blow that was only partly parried into something more survivable.
Well the thing is is that with mail you wear padding underneath it so that it will absorb the additional energy but without that padding it's basically just going to turn it into a narrow Club. But that could be interesting to see regardless.
Also not every strike is going to be full strength.
Mail is meant for slashing.
@@impalher1982 A glancing slash to the face would still be quite the slap.
Yeah. A slicing cut to the head without armor is shockingly lethal even with a shovel. Let alone a sword.
its kinda crazy that in the movies mail coifs are usually worn without the padding, like can you imagine how incredibly uncomfortable that would be if you have any hair on your head, not to mention that it would have the complete opposite effect, instead of protecting the head it would serve as another layer of metal that would help crush your skull
Especially if it's cold
That's because movie (and TV show) makers usually don't consult with historians or history books. And like some, including Skall, hinted that movie/show makers prefer not to hide the face of the actors as much as possible. Stupid reasoning for sure, but it's the reason they do it that way.
@@BigSarnt Or if it's hot due to a scene being shot on a hot summer day. Can't be comfortable without padding on with either temperatures.
To be honest, in most movies their not wearing any head protection just like shields are an endangered species no matter the era they are portraying.
Plus if you don't wear a coif your hair gets in way.
The great thing about the real human skull is that it is segmneted and porus so the force is better delt with
It's ment to minimize damage
But anyone takeing a sword strike will be damaged
Fun video thanks
Correct, that cracking would be very unlikely to happen to a real skull - but the blow would almost certainly still be lethal / crippling. Funny thing about concussive force, it can kill you without leaving much of a mark on you. Soldiers in Iraq who were quite some distance from large IEDs that detonated would sometimes get killed - yet there wasn't a mark on their body. The concussive force of a large bomb blast however, while not strong enough to tear their flesh and bones at distance, was still more than sufficient to essentially scramble their mushy brains into soup, killing them. Same goes for blows to the head.. doesn't need to break the skull, if the concussive force was sufficient to jostle the brain hard enough it can either become severely damaged or develop internal bleeding which means you're good as dead.. if not immediately, for sure within a few hours or a couple days.
I mean in some of those depictions I can see there's like their head is like bulbous so I mean it could be safe to assume that they wore a lot of padding underneath. Which you know you get enough padding up there and it'll certainly prevent damage to the bone and even make a lot of less powerful hits hardly even give you a headache but with more powerful hits I mean there's not much you're going to do about your neck breaking because no matter how much padding or how much protection you have on your head if you get hit too hard your neck is just going to snap
@@borttorbbq2556 Padding / armor also offers very little defense against concussive force, as american football players know all too well. Helmets are great at preventing broken skulls and lacerations... but can't stop your brain from sloshing around inside your skull from sudden impact to the head, damaging itself against the inside of your own skull.
@@Hathur high quality American football helmets mitigate the vast majority of concusive force, there's a reason some of these helemets are over 50,000 us dollars.
@@probablynotdad6553 So are they padded on the outside now too, instead of just hard plastic shells? Because that should actually mitigate the concussive force a little too.
I always thought of mail coifs as intended to prevent cuts to the major vessels in the neck rather than head protection… always thought the lack of actual helmets was weird.
That, and protecting your ears and scalp in a shield wall when their thrust misses and they drag the blade back along your head, hard.
Testing impacts on a chainmaille coif is essentially the same as testing most military helmets from the last century as to how well they'll stop direct bullet impact. It won't work, because that's not their purpose.
I had a similar thought as well. A full coif is the simplest way I can think to hold mail up around other vulnerable places. The video exhibits a bit of survivorship bias by demonstrating the negatives of examples from fiction rather than demonstrating the positives of examples from the historical record, imho.
Yea the mail is like cloth and can change its shape. I'm not sure why they are surprised it doesn't absorb any impact. It's like wearing a bulletproof vest jumping off the building and belly-flop to the ground and surprised the person die
It is. This video is pointless.
@@BlueLeon2287 that's his point: mail by itself (which is what you see in a lot of movies or games) is fine for stopping the cutting edge but not so much blunt force trauma.
I like how you went to demonstrate just a simple strike and thoroughly was shocked by the severe devastation of just a simple half powered strike
It's because we don't intuitively understand how much force is generated by a long lever. A sword is about the same length and weight as a baseball bat.
@@lostalone9320plus the weight distribution means it moves faster than a bat. And when velocity doubles on a equal mass you get 3 times the force
_"I didn't even hit him full force, 100 percent!."_
*-Skull cracker the modest*
I imagine in a battle, there isn’t going to be just full on swinging blows directly to the dome. Most of the cuts are glancing blows because of the chaos. They definitely protect against cuts and scrapes or else they wouldn’t have bothered
They wore padding underneath. Nobody put metal on their heads without padding.
I always thought the main purpose of it was to protect against arrows, stabbing and slicing.
What you see here is what you wear as a helmet
It's multilayered structure and you add more layers as you get less broke.
Poor and not in the militia? Bare or thick hat. Doesn't save you from direct blows, but might help with grazes and will save from knocking yourself out hitting the deck or hitting a tree while running.
Militia? You get extra leather layer that will give more blunt protection, some degree of rain protection and less grabbing points. You also may get rented mail/these small metal sheet clad leathers (In some cultures you could get weird mesh thingies).
Rich militia or regular? You get proper helmet over mail sock and might even hope for higher ups to let you roll with breastplate.
Then you get more and more extras from there.
@@burningsinner1132 o
Totally appreciate the content guys. It's awesome! Piece of advice. There were times the camera feller was looking at the impact site with his eyes not the camera. Felt like we were missing out on some cool sh*#. Not a negative on y'all. Always room for improvement.
A few comments on points that people have made so far:
- If you think the test setup is unrealistic because it's too rigid, I disagree. The analog neck is more flexible than a real one, due to lack of muscle tension, and the stand itself does have some give. In the slowmo replays you can see how the whole thing shifts around. Real life is not like movies or video games, where people are flung about like limp ragdolls. :)
- A living opponent might be able to shed some of the impact energy by moving the head backward, which is of limited use against a descending blow. If they try to dodge they would either evade the blade altogether or shift the point of impact higher on the blade, where it has less mass and would indeed do less damage. However, they might also be moving *forward* and be caught by an attack or counter to an unexpected opening, thereby amplifying the force.
- The accuracy of any head analog is always debatable. All I can say is that these skulls clearly have a high degree of anatomical accuracy in terms of shape and thickness. The other weapon tests I've done on this head (without protection), which you'll see in later videos, seemed intuitively convincing to me. Even if this material cracks more easily than a real skull, it still serves to illustrate how much energy is absorbed. Severe concussions and brain hemorrhaging are more than plausible.
- Like I pointed out in the video, a mail coif would definitely offer decent protection against light hits, and it's most definitely much better than nothing. Just imagine how much it would hurt and disorient you to receive a sword cut like that though. From sparring I can tell you that hard strikes can be quite painful even under a padded fencing mask. And that's something that often bothers me in movie fights... characters are damage sponges, taking all kinds of crazy hits left right and center, without any real consequences.
Anyway, armor is always a compromise between protection and mobility / comfort. Even the most well designed, precisely fitted armor is going to be somewhat exhausting (and hot) to fight in. Mail or plate doesn't turn you into a lumbering snail but it sure is a handicap compared to moving in clothing or light armor. Personally I'd rather wear either a helmet (or coif + helmet) or nothing, but it's a personal choice with its pros and cons. Either way, it needs to be *proper* mail, made of tightly woven rings of sufficient thickness, tailored for a snug fit with good coverage, and worn on top of sturdy padding.
You know I find one of the true and tested just universal fantasy armor.. power armor, with a little energy shield do you know like the HEV suit.. or the LOL maximum speed suit from crisis, not only does it have drugs upon which I figured at this point both protagonists are hopelessly dependent, but it's easy to move in it stops bullets and blades, and anything except for source engine ladders really, but I mean let's face it that might just be old Gordon trying to get that sweet sweet morphine administered.. like there's no reason that the guy should launch himself off the ladder like that...
But from what I can tell it works way better than than chainmail you know it also protects against some things that you know an environmental hazards that would just pop those links like Skittles, that had been put in the freezer...
It's hot in Arabia, wearing cumbersome armor will cook them in their armor. So they have to wear lighter armor or no armor at all and rely on mobility for protection. Furthermore, in Islamic era, their faith is their armor, which make sense because of the harsh condition they live in.
@@MizanQistina the faith part isnt exclusive to middle easterners ,all the people back then were very religious
@@MizanQistina The average year round temperature of the middle east is 86F. Now we are talking a very large body of land. That is the median of the whole year. So, Yes, it shoots up in the summers. Then drops in the winters.
Like at the peak of the curve is Aug at about 110F.
The lowest dip is at 64F.
It is dry and that is why it is a pain in the ass to live there.
It does snow in some countries in the middle east.
Israel, Saudi Arabia, Lebanon, Iran, Jordan, Oman and the United Arab Emirates.
So yes you could go and wear crazy heavy armor. Winters, and short periods of time in the summer. Like when you know you are going to go around killing a bunch of people.
I've seen someone get knocked unconscious by a relatively low velocity soccer ball to the head. I also know enough about torque to know that ~3lbs of ~3ft long sword (impact is based on impact point to hilt distance, not total sword length) would do some serious damage.
When even a single hit can be death or eventual death or a horrible life afterwards, even armor that only stops glancing or incidental strikes is pretty nice. An actual target would also probably be moving away from the blow, resulting in less force and a greater likelihood of the blow not making a substantive impact.
Hi Plague!
Yeah, and a human skull absorbs impacts better than whatever material they use for the bones. Which strangely they don't ever say what it is on their website, but I'm guessing it's pvc.
That's the point of having lighter armour- you're more nimble, have better effective stamina etc.
Just look how Polish 'Pancerni' looked like. They used only chainmail with some padding underneath for over 700 years and it worked because is protected from cuts and softened hits from arrows, while they were still very nimble and mobile.
East European military history proves you don't have to be a heavy tin can to be adequate against your, even heavily armoured enemies. On the contrary, the lighter formations often proved more efficient. Polish formations were only getting lighter and lighter ever since about XVth century and they were effective against anyone. The Hussars were never even considered heavy cavalry according to West-European standard. Even at the heaviest, early XVIIth century configuration, they were still lighter and carried more offensive weapons instead.
if your target is actively trying to kill you then they would probably be moving towards you
@@joaogomes9405 remember a video where a guy drop one of those "realistic" zomby heads from hip height and its chracked all the way around and leaking brains.... and my favorite is an old dude hitting ballistic torso with a replica captain america shield in the chest and due to the impact the head gets unbalanced and tears of by gravity alone.... these dummys are never a good analoge.
With the damage to the skull I can see the need for the metal skull cap.
Although the mail and material hood stop the cut, the concussion force spread out across the skull was devastating.
Yup, which is why helmets pre-date mail by centuries. The sweet spot for protection is a mix of physically preventing contact, absorbing force that is transferred and still being able to see out. Hence hoplite helmet.
Ideally you'd want a helmet that didn't physically touch your head at all but that creates awful vision problems. So you end up with padding, a coif, then a helmet and it works somewhat ok.
So what you’re saying is fantasy chain mail turns sharp metal sticks into blunt metal sticks?
I think I know why Sauron and Morgoth stuck to maces and hammers. They just cut out the middle man and went the the blunt metal sticks from the start.
Good choice too considering the opening battle in Fellowship of the Ring.
@@shadow7988 When you are basically Goliath of Gath but with dark powers and your enemies are squishy Men and Elves swinging an oversized mace around likes it's a toy bat always seems like a wise choice.
@@Muster_Muckee_II you mean, it's a grond idea?
Sharp weapons are useful though. If you find yourself going through archers, villagers, or other unarmoured men and women, you want the weapon that will cut the most people in the shortest amount of time. Given that all armies of the day saw fighting other armies as wasteful and a last resort, and there were no 'Geneva Conventions' or anything like that, armies would *prefer* to dodge the enemy armed forces and directly hack into the unarmed occupants of towns and villagers.......
@@Debbiebabe69 Unless you're particularly pissed off at said peasants most Fedual armies wouldn't whole slaughter them.
Someone has to shovel shit and plant wheat. Even the most brain dead noble realised that.
Burning entire countries to the ground was something a certain Roman senator insisted on.
Any even half professional army would be fighting wars of conquest. With the aim of having more to rule over not less.
"not cut into his head" reminds me of the logic of movie explosions where you are safe as long as the fire doesn't touch you. Disregarding that the concussive force of the shockwave made most things into jelly before the open flame even got close.
... closely followd by shockwave problems in the vacuum of space. Because pressure waves...
@@kristiandomke
Or...
"atmospheric conditions in outer space often interfere with transmitting."
- Plan 9
It’s actually fine as long as you’re slowly walking away from an explosion, not looking back.
@@kristiandomke And that's not even counting the shrapnel.
don't forget that real granades don't even make flames 😀
This is chainmail. Its purpose is to stop cuts. It wont protect from concussive forces. The reason why you explained the padded armor underneath. For its time period this was the best you were going to get. In your video you can see the armor stopping your blade from cutting it. Even when plate armor became a thing chainmail was still used. Chainmail does have a lot of problems towards it. It cant stop piercing type weapons, doesn't resist concussive forces, the process in making it was very tedious(for the time period). But the armor did its job that it was designed to do. That is to stop slashing type attacks. Comparing it to plate armor you can say its bad but a stand alone test on its weakness specifically feels like your not doing this armor justice. This armor still saved lives. That's why it was worn and lasted so long. Fun little bit of info, you can still buy chainmail mittens to use in kitchens to protect from knives while cutting. When you cut food in mass its easy to get going quickly and hit your hand or fingers, the gloves will glide the knife right off your hand.
Well his point was sort of that; as shown in history the way we did it was very different then what's seen even in larping. The head is the one place you should protect from blunt force trauma more than any other, yet the way it's portrayed in popular culture makes it seem like it was effective at jobs it literally had no ability to do. Chainmail gloves only work because you don't swing a meat cleaver into them (and I know this is a meme, but *trust* me on that one). Yea people used the hell out of this shit in history because they mostly didn't use it how we portray them using it, and he was showing us why what is portrayed is dumb
Chainmail is still decent against piercing damage as well, not just cuts. Not nearly as good as plate but at least much better than no armor at all.
I just saw the meat clever argument and can say that is wrong. You would break your fingers yeah but there would be no cut. I've scene people run their hands through mechanical slicers with chainmail gloves. The chainmail held strong and held the operators broken fingers in place.
@@axel9473 Modern stab proof vests worn by the police are chainmail. They're perfectly good vs knife thrusts.
I legit had no idea that they used to wear a small helmet beneath the mail, so thanks for the explanation of that 🙂
I genuinely thought the mail/padding combo would have done way more to protect the skull!
Might wear one bellow with a form of turban over it for cushioning, maybe a hood to keep it in place then an aventailed coif which covers the lower face and then a closed great helm over it. Depends on time frame and what cam be afforded by the person. The more you wear the hotter it is and heavier. Depending on technological development it could be more restrictive to sight and movement. Obviously lighter troops will have less restrictive armour and even protection astheare about movement and skirmish. War is a bad place to be and no matter how well armed or armoured anyone can die from battle or disease during campaigning or siege.
With the way an object hits the head it can easily crack like an egg even when padded.
guess it depends on the padding to stop the blunt force. the mail protects against piercing and slicing. not gonna do much to stop the force of the blow.
There really is no good way to protect the head. Skill and shield are your best bets. Mitigate or deflect. A helm will save you from glancing blows but even the impact on your head can beak your neck if the helmet holds.
@@talyn3932 ya if you get hit square in the head with a mace youre gonna get fucked up no matter what lol. football helmet youll sstill have a freaking horrible concussion get knocked out fall down break your neck or whatever lol
Not getting hit in the head is the best armor for the head.
My biggest takeaway is that we’ve only seen Skallagrim at 1% of his true power
He's basically doing Frieza on Namek to this head. He just needs to hope the head doesn't go super saiyan.
I think all those cracks were there already after he slapped it!
This is not even his final form.
Mail's ability to resist the cutting edge of a blade while remaining flexible cannot be understated. However as it has no structure to it like plate, blunt force is transferred almost totally unimpeded, even with padding underneath.
Ergo, where that freaking helmet, it saves lives!
I'm actually impressed by how high Skallagrim can kick. Dude clearly does martial arts.
By Muay Thai standards it would be hella sloppy, but thanks anyway. :)
@@Skallagrim No problem. Your kick was still way better than anything I can do. I have to settle aiming for their shins ;P
@@chasewebb7417 That's more practical anyway. Go for the closer targets.
Ikr?, I would love to see Skall analize historical or modern unarmed martial arts!
@@nikvett yeah would be sick
With the existence of maces, warhammers and other blunt-impact focussed weapons it's easy to forget sometimes that an average sword is still essentially a 1-3 pound bar of super hardened steel and makes a wicked bludgeon in its own right!
Every time I see the fight in Moria with the troll I think that it doesn't matter that Frodo is wearing mithril, that spear thrust would have crushed his chest like a styrofoam cup.
When it comes to magical items everything goes out the window. They could really just make something up about how mithril armor absorbs and dissipates most of the force behind a strike or something
When Frodo gets the magical mithril mail. Bilbo states it hardens like a (dragon) scale when hit.
Technologically it would be the dynamic impact absorption.
Liquid body armor, intellafoam... today we have protection with such effects.
In my opinion the coif was really about protecting the throat and cheeks, flexible areas that couldn't be rigidly armoured, illustrated by the tailored examples you showed. It would have little purpose if not paired with a helmet but might stop a quick jab or thrust. It just operates as a hood because that makes sense to protect those areas.
You could potentially rigidly armor them with a bevor or gorget, but that would only be for the richest of warriors.
@@MultiSweeney1 also time period of those types of Armor are used
Quick jab or thrust or even a cut. This weekend I was playing with my machete (shaped a lot like gladius) and I was surprised how much damage a "stab cut" can do. Stab didn't do that much, stabbing through something is pretty hard and I doubt that the tip would be sharp enough after ten minutes of fighting, but when you aim the cut slightly off center to cut with the whole length of blade, oh boy... Now, the machete was not super sharp anymore, I used it to chop some bushes and so (I think it is a pretty good simulation of blade used for some fighting and not resharpened yet) and my target was old foam mattress. Direct stab went about one or two centimeters deep. A simple slash was good, about two centimeters deep but it was quite big cut, nearly 10 centimeters long. Then slash and cut, that was a good one. 20 centimeters long, 3 centimeters deep. And stab cut went even deeper, it cut 8 to 10 centimeters deep on whole thickness (20 centimeters or so). I tried cut (so place it next to my target and just draw it) and again, pretty good.
Now, what I wanted to say. If you can get in close combat and just cut on neck, well, let's say that this guy will not be dancing anytime soon... Mail coif should be enough to stop those cuts.
Wonder about the weight to protection ratio of a mail coif without a skull cap.
@Randy Bugger the skull cap will be quite thin, so it will not play a huge role. I was talking about padding, that can be huge problem. And if you use enough padding to not feel the hit, well, you can already wear a tank, because that is how big your padding will be. Anybody can do a simple test, take few t-shirts, fold them, put them on your head and hit it with something. Soon you will realize that the only option would be
Spaceball.
Seeing a a small sword do that really puts things into perspective. Single strike kills must have been very common
I mean projectiles and spears did most of the work with a sword as a back-up(except Romans but they were stab by boys). Landing a solid hit on a moving person’s head who is also trying to kill you was harder than hitting the wrist/arm or legs.
Or a single headshot is enough to stun a fighter and make taking him down much easier.
You will probably will never manage hitting a full power swing on someone's head like that, Unless he's sleeping.
Well... This is why helmets exist.
This test was specifically done to show how bad fantasy armor depictions are. This is not indicative of real life. It's also not a real skull, and it's fixed to an inflexible stand. This puts nothing into perspective about any real-life scenario, just fantasy.
A real human being with decent armor would not receive the same damage. The force of the blow would move your body much more, absorbing the hit. Our skulls are also much more impact resistant, as our skulls are porous and hydrated. Do not take some RUclips test, that specifies it's about fantasy, and link that to the real world.
That slap was disrespectful bro, lol 💀
Gonna be honest, I actually thought the mail coif and quilted cap would have done more.
I also would wager that the fantasy mail coifs are a side effect of the fitting strings possibly deteriorating combined with most artists and writers thinking they were supposed to fit like modern hoods rather than something more formfitting. Or at the very least, a solid full metal helmet over it would have protected from the perceived shortcomings.
The dummy is also braced so it won't fall over and isn't trying to move at all. If somebody was fighting they might move away from the hit and unless they are super bad at fighting the other person might be more tired and slow a little weaker and slower.
Still not the best protection but id imagine there would be a few factors that reduce the damage a little more than what a dummy can account for
I agree with Avery this isn't entirely representative. Clearly no armor can ever protect from everything, but a real human has a flinch reflex that has probably got them moving away from the danger quite often, and to me at least that structure looks like it is rather stiffer against the blow than a human would be too. Still a great demo of just how destructive a hit can be even with protection, but in the real world I'd expect concussion over death more often that this testing would imply.
And I agree with you somewhat on writers and artists using a modern frame of reference more often as they don't know the historical facts or for artistic reasons have chosen to ignore them. Can't be form fitting if the armor isn't yours, don't want to hide the facial expressions too badly etc.
Not like it's the best representation though, the dummy is set and not moving at all and the pvc material they use for the bones in these ballistics dummies don't behave the same as bone. They are noticeably worse at absorbing impacts, which is why high-end dummies use hardened resin instead which behaves more closely to human bone in that it's porous and shatters into small fragments more than it completely cracks apart.
I say it actually shows a lot of protection considering that the skull would be cut in half if it wasn't for the mail.
@@EvidensInsania if a weapon did that kind of damage after one swing that receiver would still die from the hemorrhaging.
A literal wooden bucket would have been an upgrade to your mail coif and padding combo, and maybe just enough to rob strength of those direct head hits.
That just reminded me of the Divinity Original Sin 2 game where you can literally wear a bucket as a helm xD
@@erickchristensen746 In the game Exanima you can pick up random junk around and drop them on your characters head, it does actually stop sone damage.
So you're all idiots.
Got it
@@daviswhite3591
Lol says the real idiot going around like he thinks he is top shit
...Hence, the bucket helm,possibly directly descended of the so-called saltshaker pot-helm. Sort of a product-improved version -- first a face plate (also called an aventail, as you breathed through it), follewed very soon by a rather short nape plate which with time got longer. Compare Maciejowski bucket helms to the Dargan and Bolzano helms.
You gave that dummy one hell of a HAIRLINE FRACTURE. :o)
This is just with sword. If you use an axe or mace, his brain would be made of mail.
"Mail pattern baldness."
OMG!
Look! He made a funny!
@@jimmyrustler8983 Is what you would get using the coif without anything underneath. imagine your hair getting pinched between the rings and jerked off throwout the day.
@@jimmyrustler8983 Holy hell!
Never change Skallagram. You're content is like a comfort food for the spirit. Something I can turn to, too relax, enjoy and learn something new. I appreciate you man. May your endeavors be successful.
As a regular Rimworld player, I can confirm that when armor succeeds against sharp damage, it's mostly just converted into blunt damage. :o
I was always under the impression that the coif was worn under a helmet, over a padded hood.
Typically is
There are many historical pictures of people wearing only coifes without an helmet. But they always have weirdly large heads. It looks like they have padding underneath, which is much thicker than what he used in the video. I imagine, with a seriously thick padding, you would be pretty save, even when someone hits you with full power. At least when the weapon is not something like a heavy hammer. In that case, a helmet wouldn't help that much either.
Round helmet under mail, or over it, seemed a matter of taste or of fashion... possibly whether that helmet was a bit too large for wearing beneath the coif.
@@w.reidripley1968 sir it's all about Price. Unless you a merchant or mercenary this would quickly become a waste of valuable tax, church "donation, debt, or food funds.
This bothered me a lot in episode 1 of Rings of Power when Galadriel is only wearing a mail cap in the biting cold, both for these reasons and the complete lack of insulation.
Well, Rings of Power doesn't look like it's been written well at all. And it also looks unbelievably boring.
Ring of power is tragedy
If you know LOTR you can easily imagine there are some enchantement on it or special materials from valinor or something. But yet the ring of power are.... A disappointment
Cold metal against your skin in winter? Oi. Really need to wear some sort of fabric underneath to insulate yourself. Metal cools rapidly when exposed to cold air, along with wind. That'll just suck the warmth out of your body in record time. You might be better off not wearing anything instead.
yeah, but it's a fantasy show
good to see the channel popping off bro!!
"slashing attacks are useless against chainmail"
skull fracture: true, but...
I think the worst part in all this is that no matter how much chain or plate your wrap the character in, if their face is covered they are likely to be a disposable extra and die in one hit to their heavily-armoured chestplate anyway.
100% - I mean I could kindof understand if it was 'historical' fantasy with say King Arthur stabbing with Excalibur or in examples where someone's getting wailed on by a guy with a polearm or getting charged by a horseman with a lance but it's unforgivable in most 'historical' films that treat steel breastplates like tin foil.
@@Neion8 Amen to that--to be fair I'd even argue it's unforgivable in fantasy films as well. The archetypal Warrior or Paladin is rocking big plate armour for a good reason, and I've seen folks diminish the strength of heavy armour so damn often because of mainstream sources
@@whitsword I mean, 'because magic' is a hard thing to argue against when magic sword beats mundane armour (otherwise what's the point of a magic sword?) - though it's different if both are magical.
The thing I find most weird is the swap of blunt force trauma and fire damage - which should go through metal defences - and piercing/slashing attacks which really shouldn't do shit; someone could be smashed through a wall, thrown across a room by an explosion or be engulfed in fire and still be fine but heaven help them if an arrow fired by a skinny teenager with poor technique and a 30lb practice bow hits them even on solid plate.
Given the lack of gambeson/padding in most fantasy armour designs, it's even worse that their most glaring weakness is seemingly a non-issue.
@@Neion8 Oh well, of course magical/enchanted weapons, or even strong creatures that can wield gigantic blades, are entirely fine by me. My issue with that is mostly when it comes to poons fighting poons in big battle scenes and whatnot. It always feels like those random soldiers are wearing armour for literally no reason. Sometimes these kinds of settings would benefit from making a bigger deal out of the chads wearing full plate and making them less numerous, and include more of those less-armoured, militia-like soldiers to keep the death count up.
Cause in some settings, it really feels like "that one likely overpriced plate armour is the standard" and that's about all you see human footmen wear in battle, and it just doesn't protect them anyway!
@@whitsword Very true - the problem is then the narrative would be very obvious with the wealthy adventurers/nobles in full plate slaughtering legions of barely armed, barely trained peasents who've been forced into combat and yet supposedly being the good guys because they're fighting for the same order that kept their enemies downtrodden.
Actually, on second thought that makes it better as writers will have to work a little harder on giving characters y'know - actual characteristics and values to root for - other than just being the MC and therefore in the right.
2:30 that joy with the dumb pun ... Amazing! ^^
Another reason not to go 100 on a swing is because you don't want to overcommit if you miss...
if you hit them once - especially in the head, you can probably hit them again.
@@Wyzai it may be unnecessary if you sever the brain.
I read somewhere once that it was also important not to swing too hard because you risked your weapon getting wedged in your opponent's body. Then you're standing there trying to wiggle your sword out of some guy's head while he his brother is running up with a vengeful look in his eyes.
The fantasy coif is only to increase your armor class so the enemy is more likely to MISS you! 😂
"Best defense is no be there" -Mr. Miyagi
Nah.
The D&D armour class system isn't representing how likely the enemy is to hit, but to land a hit that can injure. Getting -3 AC from armour (or +3 nowadays) doesn't mean 15% of attacks will now be dodged, but that 15% of incomibg attacks will "miss" your unprotected body, as in they hit, but they hit your armour instead of your flesh.
It's not 100% realistic of course, but the general videogame damage reduction system isn' better either, because tgere you wear padding plus full plate and yet a sword strike hitting the plate will somehow cause bleeding.
You are supposed to use the mail in conjunction with your training, and other weaponery
The mail is for glacning off a richicheting blade after blade to blade contact, it does not give you invincibility to sword strikes
Likewise, in our time, our body armors such as kevlar and ceramic plates, are designed to absorb as much impact as possible before the bullet hits you
This mean a bullet vest does not make you in impervious to bullets, it only make you resistant to it. Many the right caliburs can still cause harm and death regarless of what body armor we are wearing
Besides the ones we are not told about
A secret is such a practical and universal thing that polypropylene versions are cheap and plentiful to this day. Ideal for blue collar workers, DIYers, and anyone who expects to work around a lot shelves, awkward tight spaces, or pine trees.
hard hats made of basketry were traditionally worn by masons in many southern European countries until the plastic hard hats replaced them.
Modern PPE and police riot gear vs medieval weapon testing would make a cool video
Yeah! Bumpcap is so much more practical than helmet in these environments!
@@Winchester7734 well basic motor bike helmets are designed to protect the nogging when you come off. Sport helmets even more so! Same with horse helmets
@@Winchester7734 careful with the police riot gear... youtube might go "this is a torurial on how to injure law enforcement" as they did with the slingshot channel
Yes! Zombie heads are back! That's the content that got me hooked on your channel in the first place! Great!
Damn Skall the algorithm smashed this one out of the park! Grats
Chainmail worn on bare skin would probably snag and grabb on body hair a lot. Auwch...
Could you imagine trying to take it off after a day of fighting or training, shit would’ve ripped your hair out
Yeah I mean, don’t movie extras or actors ever complain of the misery the coif idiotism causes? Or do they just suck it up and think ”wow, this really sucked hundreds of years ago”? Of course, they might not have much of a say in any case…
@@aapelikahkonen I have a feeling they probably put some sort of hair net / cap on them to stop that from happening honestly, like what they do when they put a wig on someone they have that little cap to cover their real hair, I’m not sure though honestly, I was a stage actor for a while but I honestly have no experience with mail coifs even costume ones
But apperantly, padding was NOT always used but only a fool would go without some cloth to protect against shafing.
@@aapelikahkonen Yes, in situations where there has been any skin-on-mail contact for a long period of time (even in tiny cases, such as mail sleeves being slightly longer than the fabric beneath, meaning mail only touches the cuff), actors have reported that hairs can and do get caught in the links, and its generally a very abrasive material.
"He's not having a good day in any way, shape or form" he says, while the skeleton in the back enthusiastically nods in agreement
The coif is to avoid being wounded, not to avoid bones fractures...is what I think...👍🏼
Exactly
Also to avoid bugs when in the forest
Bone fractures are wounds
it gave the wearer padding to avoid fractures from blows
.... to an extent.
@@ashleydavis2663 I found his comment to be odd also. Like only a cut is a wound 😃
The results for exactly what I expected. The problem with maille on your head is that maille is flexible. You don't have muscle and tissue to help absorb the blow like you would on most of your body. This is one reason why I feel rigid helms came about before rigid body defenses; in most cases.
Also easier to make. Your head doesn't have a lot of moving parts to complicate armor with.
@@adambielen8996 good point
Also, along with muscles and fat, limbs are quite flexible, which dissipates a portion of the impact. Getting hit on the head from above, the only flexibility you're getting is if your spine cracks and collapses
@@jaroslavsvaha6065 good point! I didn't think to include 5hst but it certainly is a factor
@@jaroslavsvaha6065 and obviously breaking a few bones isn't really that horrible but breaking your scull is
hey Skal just a suggestion, cos its hard to get an accurate test on the 2nd hit with more padding, because the skull is already cracked and weakened by the first hit
it might make more sense from a testing pov if you start with the most protection like coif + helmet etc. then work your way down so you can see the minimum amount of armour you need for protection
That at least. Or (expensive) use a fresh Skull for every blow.
It seems to me that it was used to protect the head from an accidental arrow, as they now use helmets against shrapnel in the army
I'd love to see a "mordhau" strike with the crossguard and how it compares to a regular sword hit vs a fully padded skull + mail + helmet.
Little feedback on the length of the video: Really liked it
This short format is perfect for me, someone with ADD, after a full day of work and then household after that
Little quick dose of information that's easily watchable for me without having to strain my attention span (especially after my ADD meds have worn out for the day)
Iiiô
While I absolutely agree with the sentiment that wearing just chainmail for head protection is suboptimal, I think it's a bit overstated here.
1. Oxygenated human bones and tissue are known to be considerably stronger than these analogue dummies are. Not so much that the results in these tests are necessarily not representative of reality, but it's still not entirely accurate to the durability of a human skull.
2. Because of how this dummy is set up, it's taking the brunt of the force primarily on it's skull without any sort of force dissipation whatsoever. While a person standing upright getting hit by this would be hurt for sure, the amount of damage caused would be lessened by the fact they'd most likely react physically to the injury as it's happening, have the impact force far more efficiently dissipated through their skull and their body in general, a wood stand that keeps the head in roughly the same position even as it's impacted isn't representative of how someone being hit would react.
3. Mail coifs are better than absolutely nothing, as it is said in the video. Even if this was entirely, 100% accurate, your poor victim would still have at minimum the same amount of damage represented here if they had nothing on. Chances are it'd be even worse. But as it is said in the video, again, this isn't exactly the type of thing a coif would be expected to reasonably protect from, so it's by far the least big issue.
You cutting and armor test videos are my favorite and this was a real treat great job skall.
The rebound after the slap kinda looked like deliberate movement.
You gotta "Brrrr" the slap away.
daaamn so good, great vid Skallagrim and team!
i honestly love these kinds of tests would be intresting to see something like modern composite helmets tested like this
Modern Helmets do not do great jobs. It's part of the problem.
One thing to note is that bone isn't that hard when people are alive, they're far more flexible, otherwise a simple jump would crack them, but even with the flexibility, getting hit in the head by something is not pleasant.
the thing people forget about swords is that it's still a big metal stick even if its blunt or you're wearing flexible armor.
2:05 he'll be feeling that in the morning lmao he'll need more than a couple Tylenol and a nap lol 😆
While only using about 70% power is good there are two other factors you might want to consider:
1) You probably should do some glancing blows. You did mention them but it would help to illustrate the 'better than nothing' factor. Of course that means you also have you need to do some hits with no armor at all for comparison , which would also be good to see even with the direct hits. Sure, that cracked skull was very bad news and probably ultimately fatal, especially in the middle ages, but what would the effect have been of the identical blow with no protection.
2) You probably should do something so that the target has more 'give'. A person hit like that will have their head snap to the side and will also have their center of mass propelled away (they won't go flying away, but they will stagger). Both of these things would lessen the moment of impact enough that whatever armor is being tested might perform far better.
Neither of which are meant to imply that you are wrong about the inaccuracies about how coifs are shown. Merely that these factors may help provide more realistic results to your examples.
This, I kept thinking if someone can stand that hard against a blow, likely they’ll rank the brain damage long enough it won’t matter and keep fighting until they drop. They should have a system that buckles under certain pounds of force similar to how humans react, they aren’t wooden super sturdy braces with heads and arms. Also wish the bone material behaved like real bones instead of cracking everywhere, because you might get a skull fracture from the hits, but it would be less due to how bones absorb impacts and how the body reacts.
The way I see it, your introverted friend took it like a man, smiling to the end, kudoz!!!
And from the Fifth Element we know 'green' is good.
That was the slap, that was felt across the entire zombie Nation. It's good to see someone finally standing up for living human rights.
This is the first time I see a video from your channel, and I was ecstatic. As an anthropology fan, this video was a delight. You have a new sub.
It's not meant to take a full on unblocked blow.
In a real battle you will rarely get such a powerful swing in with such accuracy.
5:38 NGL, that is a nice kick
In terms of protection against concussions and any damage in general the weight of the armor has to offer some of the resistance. Not only are they hitting your 11 pound head, that head has a 5 pound helmet on it. Even if the energy is all imparted and it doesn't penetrate they are now trying to accelerate an object that is much heavier. That means less acceleration in general and less damage to the brain from shaking around.
The heavier head will still work against you in some ways because of the slower acceleration. This is because the force of the sword hitting the head will be greater, but for a shorter amount of time.
The cap isn't really going to prevent concussion (that is what the padded cap is for), but rather it is there to distribute the load so your skull doesn't crack. It is an armor system, the mail to prevent the cut, the cap to distribute the force, and the padded hood to take the sting out of everything. Any individual piece is insufficient, but as a whole they are pretty good.
Great video! Thanks for testing this. So many weapons vs armor tests simply hit the armor with weapons, see that the armor is fine, then assume that the target beneath the armor would be fine.
I think you should've used a marker to draw lines over the cracks made with each blow, to get an accurate measure of how much damage you did each time. It's all too easy to mistakenly think the second and subsequent blows did more damage than you thought it did, because you got confused which blow caused which crack.
A subsequent blow is a blow to a compromised structure. It shows the cumulated damage. It will not show the damage that would have been done to a fresh skull anyway. OTOH those dummies may be too expensive to perform every strike against a new dummy.
@@maxlutz3674 $250 a head, depending on where you wanna buy it. that's only the head, a bust version can go up to 300 and more.
The only reason to be in battle with only a mail coif would be that your helmet got knocked off or you got ambushed and didn't have a helmet on at the time.
You would not put a coif on in that case, as it would be nearly useless to you and take you time to find it and put it on. Also, it wouldn't be shaped for your unpadded head.
You would be grabbing a weapon and getting into position to support your comrades in arms and they you.
Best clip out around 4:18 "there's a massive crack right underwear" 🤣 if you're flexible with the spelling
Open palm slap. Sir, are you challenging me?
I also think it’s important to look at the whole “kit” a warrior would be wearing. In times of chainmail coifs we clearly see that they were a minor help against sufficient blows and may turn glancing hits from fatal into injuries. A win already. Add a metal cap or helm and I think most of these would turn the “cracked skull” into a concussion (from a 1h weapon at least). Add a nasal and cheek guards and now slashes to the front and sides of the face may be mitigated slightly. This is also why the people of that era often fought with shields. Protection against getting hit in the first place. And the chain and pad helms turn any deflections or stray hits into relatively harmless blows. Once armor got good, shields weren’t needed bc the armor WAS proof against most weapons. So you needed bigger and badder weapons.
As someone who does SCA armored fighting the amount of small incidental hits from friend and foe in a big melee are not insignificant haha.
What you're saying sounds a lot like the survivability chain of an MBT minus the stealth aspect:
1: Try not to be hit.
2: If you are hit, try to deflect it.
3: If you can't deflect it, try not to be penetrated/damaged.
4: If you are gonna be damaged/your armour penetrated then try to minimise the wounds that get through.
4: If you can't minimise the damage, then compartmentalise it so you can keep fighting - ergo a broken arm is better than a severed one due to less blood loss and a cracked skull is better than getting your head opened up like a can because with the adrenaline pumping through you, you might have a few more attacks left in you before you succumb to your wounds during which time you might avenge yourself and/or save an ally's life and help win the battle or cover a retreat. Sometimes armour is less about keeping you alive personally and more about better exploiting your death for the benefit of your army.
A chain coif might be worse than certain helmet designs for parts 3 and 4 but be less of a hinderance to you for aspects 1 and 2 due to more of its weight resting on your shoulders than your head; making your head lighter and thefore easier to lean out of the way of - or angle against - a strike. Also, any armour will decrease the likelihood of you getting RIP'd by a random arrow before you can contribute to the battle which is also nice.
@@Neion8 I don't think the weight of the chain would be a big factor tbh. I would WAY rather have a helmet than have my head be more nimble.
One factor I WILL say, is that as someone who fight en masse in battles in the SCA, wearing the armor makes you FEEL more protected, and are therefor more likely to put yourself in daring and dangerous situations that the battle at hand may call for. When i am in my full armor, with a good helmet and shield, I feel pretty "safe" running into groups of enemies and fighting. I will almost definitely get hit but I know it's not going to hurt too bad etc. It can make you "braver" in that respect.
Even if the chain coif doesn't really do anything against certain types of strikes, it may allow you to fight more confidently because your fears of being struck are somewhat subsided.
The most historically accurate slap ive ever seen, bravo sir.
Lindybeige did a great one on this. He basically made a gambeson for his skull to go under the coif, it looked funny, but it looked just like most of the painting la I’ve seen. Really cool to see ballistic tests on this.
His was super fat and did look silly - But as Lloyd pointed out, there isn't much currency in being a really handsome corpse.
You should bring a doctor to one of these tests and have them explain the medical stuff :) Could be interesting to watch.
Ooooohhhh. Doctor Mike collab maybe?
It's pretty much common sense that a complex cranial fracture means probable death within 48 hours. If there's visible hemorrhaging it's probably much shorter.
@@adamb8317 no doubt! That was my first thought as well. No doc needed
@@adamb8317 Exactly, and in the rare cases where people miraculously survive such a fracture, it's purely luck and the doctor wouldn't even be able to tell. You can't tell from the outside how bad the brain is messed up, how much bleeding, which parts of the brain are damaged.
It would still be interesting to hear the Doctor's prognosis though
Using only a metal coif for protection this is some big brain testing here
This is why the Norman knights at Hastings and the First Crusade wore nasal helmets over the mail coif. Even later Crusader knights used great helms for protection over their coifs.
Erm why point them out over anyone else? It implies others did it differently. The mail coif came around after the helmet, and never superseded it? It was an addition to head and neck defence
@@tommeakin1732 the main use was against arrows not direct strike. It was to reduce the penetration of arrows with the hope they will bounce off the areas that the helmet couldn't protect
@@tommeakin1732 Correct. Polish 'Pancerni' had a sort metal cap just over their heads, integral with mail coif. It protected against hit from over head, but not from the side. This pattern was used for over 700 years, and given battle results, it was good. Generally speaking, in Eastern Europe lighter armour allowing for more endurance and mobility was favoured and proven very effective. Even against heavy West-European cavalry.
Who cares about having a chance of surviving a blow to head (still bruised though), when lighter and flexible armour gives you ability to dodge, better see what's going on, change positions on the battlefield more easily and march more miles every day.
The mails of Pancerni were only dropped when firearms got so good and battles relied on them so heavily, it didn't make sense to wear armour at all. Untill then, they were doing a damn good job, whatever the century or enemy.
The greathelm would have been worn over a skull cap and coif. Which was because the greathelm would be thrown off once knights got into close quarter fights. It's vision was way too restrictive for the protection to be a net benefit. This is why it is often depicted with a chain that connects it to the breastplate: This way it could just be dropped without loosing it.
It was, in a way, a predecessor to the articulated visor, which you'd put down during a charge, but raise in close quarter fighting.
@@Marveryn I think you're wrong to try to be that specific, and as far as threats go, mail isn't exactly that well optimised for stopping arrows, at least from what I've seen. It seems to primarily excel at stopping cuts, and reducing that force to blunt trauma. The significance of mail covering the neck is *huge* as even relatively weak cuts there can be lethal. Mail there would absolutely save you against a direct strike
The fragility of our species' skull is scaring me
Why? we got this far.
@@Fuzzycat16 yeah, thanks to the invention of the helmet, but boy how easy is to get one of us in a critical state with a bludgeoning attack
Maybe it's not that the skull is so fragile, it's just everything hits like a ton of bricks.
The problem is that our weapons keep getting better while our skulls stay the same.
@@whyjay9959 THATS WHY YOU NEED TO WEAR A SECOND, METAL SKULL!! (Helmet)
Chain mail is designed to protect from slices and wide arrow heads , not blunt force . Put a helmet on the dummy.
Whilst I fully concur with what you are saying, it should be pointed out that often the aim of armor was to reduce damage, not eliminate it. Killing wound to major wound for example, major wound to minor wound. You do miss out on a fairly obvious fantasy problem with no padding though... the hair being pulled out when taking the coif off.
Yup sadly however.....without the helmet under it these were all killing wounds at that point in time. Probably even today. However when you look at actual artwork of the era, in most cases they seem to have a lot of something on their heads. Be it just padding or another helmet under the mail. Their heads look so bulbous. That can't always be artistic license.
Nah, I'm fairly sure anyone donning armour would rather get away with no damage worth mentioning, not just turn killing blows into injuries. Not to mention, injuries that today would heal completely were often deadly in the past due to nonexistent medical know-how, so soldiers would rather avoid any injuries beyond minor scrapes.
@@herrakaarme Graves of warriors would contradict that assumption with examples of chipped bones etc. Of course having no wounds is preferable but no armor makes you invulnerable. You may also consider why full armor wasn't always used even when cost wasn't a factor. Only a breastplate for example when speed became more valuable than a layer of metal between you and the enemy. It's a matter of compromise.
@@freakygoblin3068 I'd fully agree with you here, if not for your choice of words: "aim of armor was to..." The aim of most warriors would have been to make it out of the battle as an uninjured winner or at least an uninjured survivor. If a lord provided armor for his men, he might not have cared that much about their individual lives, save for his favourites, but most of the time he still would have wanted minimal casualties to keep his side strong, so his aim would be only minor damage.
This was quite pedantic, sorry about that, but I was just feeling pedantic after seeing someone mention Rings of Power in another comment.
There is one other thing, that is not mentioned there:
As the chainmail moves, it's going to "sink through" any and all body hair it is straight under it, ripping it off of the skin in the proces…
Also, there were cases, back in early LARP years, where people (LARPing as Conan-style barbarians) were wearing chainmail over naked skin, with solar heat and excercise eventually grafting their chainmail INSIDE their skin…
That... is terrifying, and not a mental image I needed today. Thanks, RUclips User Falkon Nightsdale.
In your picture you have long hair. I know what happens to hair like that when you put mail coif directly on it. On one hand, it is horrible to see when somebody does that, but on the other hand, it is amazing fun when somebody is "big tough guy who can wear chainmail directly without that padded cap that is only for pussies".
Randomly found this and realized I’ve been missing out on this epic channel.
I always thought mail coifs went over padded cloth coifs. On top of that, people also sometimes wore helmets (or so I believed).
5:25 sheeeeit been there before 😆
“The flimsy crap you see….” Oh my god lmao 😂 😂 It’s all in the way he says it! My first time at this channel, I loved this! Subscribed! Thanks! 👍🏼🏰
Instead of a sword, you should take a saber or a dagger. The chain mail hood should save from cutting blows and help a little from arrows falling at the end. This is not a replacement for a full-fledged helmet that can withstand a blow from a sword. Therefore, it is not very correct to test a mail hood in the same way as a helmet.